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:

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. If you plan on doing something more with a form make it simple and extremely useful.

Deep hierarchical tree navigation.
In my opinion, tree navigations should be kept small anyway, but if you must have it then Ajax can make life easier. This is a perfect application of Ajax, actually. Ordinarily, the page would have to load the entire tree data regardless of what has been expanded or not. With Ajax, one does not need to request deeper tree data unless needed by the user. Alex states a prime example of threads in discussion forums.

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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.

From a user perspective, though, AJAX applications - such as Google Maps or Microsoft’s Web Exchange client - are simply web applications that more closely approximate features normally associated with traditional, standalone desktop applications.

All this is all well and good. Ajax is a wonderful new technology, which we should all try to explore and exploit to its full capacity. BUT, that JavaScript portion of Ajax is causing some problems, as John notes:

The fact that you can write interactive web sites in Javascript, though, doesn’t make Javascript a great programming language for complex site development.

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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.

The first, Gollum, puts a nice interface on Wikipedia: basically a Wikipedia browser (although it still needs a full fledged browser to run).

The second, Placeopedia, combines Wikipedia articles with Google Maps based on article location. I’m not sure whether there is a huge demand for this, but it is an interesting idea.

Gollum, however, does seem like it’s going to have a greater appeal for those who felt the normal Wikipedia interface to be to intimidating.

Popularity: 2%

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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.

Are they really claiming that Ajax should be independent of the server backend? That, to me, seems like insanity. Then what would be the point? Wouldn’t this simply be just an ordinary HTTP request sending huge packets of data over and over again?

I feel that one of the key advantages of Ajax, is it’s tight integration with the server backend. You can make specific requests to the server for specific data segments and get specific replies.

I’m curious to hear what your views are.

Popularity: 2%

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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?  There was a nice article about this written at Microformats.  They give nice code examples, but if you already have Ajax implemented, it’s not a long stretch of the imagination.  Before that, let me get into why some people may want to use it.

Whether we like to admit it or not, XML is still just text.  There is no sort of data compression done to make it faster to transfer or anything.  It’s just text.  The advantage, of course, is that it is highly structured.  XML does have its place, but sometimes it is just overkill for simple things.  For example, if the server simply needs to reply with a short “YES” or “NO”, then wrapping these in complex XML tags just packs on much more than is needed.  Also, after being received on the client it, it needs to be decoded and handled.

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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. ChicagoCrime.org used a public police database to add pop-ups pinpointing reported crimes in Chicago’s neighborhoods. Other hacks blend Google Maps with weather information and lists of Wi-Fi hotspots, with a pedometer program, with traffic and weather reports, and even with a scavenger hunt game.

AJAX, the main technology behind Google Maps, has been around for ever. The question that I have is that, why do developers only flock on to knew technology after Google has had their way with it? It is obvious that Google is constantly leading the way when it comes to Web Development, but why? Think back to the inception of GMail, when Google started offering 1 GB of email storage. It was just storage space, so Yahoo or Microsoft could have easily done this in the past. But it took Google doing it before these other companies decided to up their space. Why is Google always in the forefront and everyone else chasing at their heels?

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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.

Yahoo is adding some keyboard functionality. Control and Shift keys to select multiple messages; PgUP and PgDN to scroll through messages; and they do have an interesting feature where multiple messages can be opened in the same window.

Microsoft is basically making Windows Live Mail into a sort of Hotmail on steroids. It’s basically going to be Outlook from the browser.

Zimbra, although a little rougher (give them a break, they’re new), does look more promising in my view. Check out their online demo here. They’re not into the personal email accounts thing. Their suite is aimed at cooperations and businesses and goes way beyond just email. They can also integrate a company’s own database into this making ordering, for example, painless.

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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.

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