AJAX – Things To Keep In Mind

Since the boom of Ajax a couple months ago, a lot of developers have been riding the wave. But there are somethings that you need to keep in mind. You can’t just go totally Ajax-crazy unless it suits your particular needs. If you are still developing a “Website” (in the purest sense), that is going to be open to the public and something you need traffic to the entire site cannot and should not be totally Ajax.

Tom Taulli at Forbes.com points this out.

“A complete AJAX application would be a mistake because search engines won’t be able to index it. And without a search engine, a site won’t be able to sell products.”

Thus, a better approach would be to sprinkle AJAX features within the application; not make it a complete AJAX application.

This is totally true, seeing that Ajax (without the necessary hacks) does not change anything on the address bar, and you can’t usually access certain portions of the application directly through the browser’s URL.

If you’re like me, however, and you are developing a “Web Application”, then totally Ajax may be what you want. I might be what I want too, I haven’t decided yet :). What I’m saying is this, don’t take the Ajax thing overboard. Use it for what you need to and move on from there. Use Ajax, but use it sparingly to maximize its effectiveness.