Alex Bosworth over at Alex Bosworth’s Weblog wrote up a nice synopsis on 10 Places you should use Ajax. There is the basic list:
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Form driven interaction.**
Alex claims that forms are slow and clunky. I agree to a certain extent that Ajax can be used effectively here, but we must remember to make things painfully clear to the user. If a form looks like a form the user is going to expect it to operate like like a form.
An interesting article from John Carroll | ZDNet.com explores the differences between AJAX and desktop development.
Ajax is rapidly growing into something a lot of developers did not expect. Web designers can now design flashier web pages (minus the Flash). Other web designers are bridging the gap between desktop applications and web applications. Users have begun to take strong notice to this and are, in some cases, requesting such advances in web development.
An interesting article from ZDNet.com introduces a couple new tools for Wikipedia.
The popularity of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute, is spawning a host of complementary tools and offshoots.
One of them is called Gollum, a free Web application that creator Harald Hanek describes as a Wikipedia “browser.” The tool provides an alternate, streamlined user interface for Wikipedia that puts the search feature front and center and allows for some customization.
…I came across the following article: How AJAX kills the application server | Software as services | ZDNet.com and was a bit surprised.
An unnoticed side-effect of implementing rich Internet application platforms whether they’re AJAX or anything else is that this ‘client-service’ architecture eliminates the need for an application server to connect the Web client to back-end resources……But it’s still devolving more processing to the client, so it requires far less horsepower than it would to deliver the same functionality to a wholly web-based client.
AHAH: Asynchronous HTML and HTTP. Or AJA, as I like to call it; Asyhcrhronous JavaScript And…. :). Also known as AJAH: Asynchronous JavaScript and HTML. OK, so we’re just throwing around terms here, but basically it boils down to Ajax without the XML component.
XML is the main communication method over the Internet. Many applications use XML to transmit data to and from servers and clients. But is it right for all of us?
An article from LinuxWorld brought something to my attention today. The article speaks about Goggle’s use of AJAX and the fact that developers started making use of AJAX and other Web 2.0 objects after Google.
Google Maps was Ground Zero. Within weeks of Google Maps' debut, developers were creating custom overlays to blend the mapping service with outside data streams. HousingMaps.com brought in CraigsList.org real-estate listings and used Google Maps to illustrate the locations of advertised houses and apartments.
The Break Down All three of these companies have decided to give webmail a “fresh spin”:
Microsoft and Yahoo are poised to make Web-based e-mail more powerful than ever with updates that bring a desktop-style interface to their respective Web mail offerings.
We tested betas (currently invitation-only) of Windows Live Mail and Yahoo Mail, and also looked at an open-source newcomer called Zimbra.
All three apps use an increasingly popular programming technique called Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to improve on standard Web mail and even Google’s Gmail.
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.
Opera has announced a beta software development kit (SDK) for its mobile phone Web browser and user interface package, called Opera Platform.
I thought I was the only one seeing the benefit of using Ajax. 😀
Full Article at News.com
Brian Goldfarb, a Microsoft Product Manager, had an interview some days ago where he answered questions about the company’s plans with Ajax development tools. This is quite an interesting article. However, I love the way that Dion at Ajaxian.com summarized things summarizes things:
To some up:
“Ajax is hard” “Microsoft invented Ajax” “Microsoft will make it easier” This was basically what Brian Goldfarb seemed to have been getting to.