AJAX…62% good?
I remember when FLASH was the big thing. I was a freelancer and it was 1999.
I went to so many web sites. Almost all of them were a let down. Questionable content presented in frustrating ways.
People got caught up in FLASH. Everyone was a Flash developer.
At the time, FLASH (or at least 90% of the implementations I saw) did not make sense to me. I advertised myself as someone who made “subtle use of Flash”. To me that meant “practical” use of Flash.
AJAX is the big thing right now. AJAX is pretty cool. I really like that the BIG THING with AJAX is NOT the wow factor, it’s the improved usability – at least that’s the big thing in my books. That said, there will be lots of sites that get caught up in the WOW and lose sight of the usability.
We use AJAX on 2ndSite now and we will use it more. Our use is so “subtle” you may not even realize we use it. We use it to enhance performance (page loading).
Flash is 99% bad is a concept I heard about Friday. It stands for 99% bad implementations. I’m curious to see how people use AJAX and what the implementations turn out to be. There are a lot of browser compatibility issues with AJAX. The “Back” functionality is problematic.
I’m a glass is half full kind of guy. What do you think? Ajax is 62% good? I guess we’ll have to wait and see…
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2:15 pm
“To further make the flash comparison: When someone finally adds a *SKIP* button on lengthy forms, then I'll be impressed =^)”
7:51 pm
“AJAX and Flash have very different feelings and attitudes about them. Flash mostly was, and is, to get noticed, to impress people. As you said yourself, AJAX is really about not getting noticed, about getting the process of using the app to be as seamless and painless as possible. Eliminating all those clunky, time-consuming page reloads.
It sounds much like Don Norman says about a good machine being an invisible machine. People want their tools to get out of the way and let them actually work.
It's good to see the smaller Web 2.0 companies blazing the AJAX trail, not without a few overzealous excesses, of course. It'll be interesting to see how, when or even whether the two ecommerce dinosaurs, Amazon and eBay, implement it. Then we'll know AJAX has really come of age.”
2:34 pm
“I think it's important to note a few things:
- technologies themselves aren't "bad", it's the people who implement them that aren't doing the appropriate homework
- Not all web projects are intended to be "highly usable". Though I personally feel that usability is very important, I think it's OK for other people to opt not to care about usability, for other reasons.
That said, yes, I'd say Ajax is, maybe 70% good….and flash, well, 70% bad..wouldn't go so far as 99% because there are flash implementations out there that are well done.”
2:58 am
as a freshbooks user, I can say yes, you doa good job with ajax usage, and it is all about usability for me. if it’s cute, thats what we have flash for. I found a common distinction in usage is this: ajax for data display and manipulation, and flash for graphical displaying of data, especially vector images (charts, graphs, maps, etc) as this is not handled well by other apps. the only other use of flash MAY be in branding situations (eg. fashion website front end). I am business oriented in my day job, so I am often bothered by flash otherwise because of its generally low usability / high learning curve. Ajax on the other hand CAN (not necessarily) substantially increase usability in some cases where you would like a web-app to run like a desktop app–page reloads are painful many times, so if adding ajax makes it easier to use, then go for it. There is still great use for standard html output too of course; so go easy on the ajax cleanser and you might have a really polished app.