Ajax mistakes

Alex reports:

Ajax is also a dangerous technology for web developers, its power introduces a huge amount of UI problems as well as server side state problems and server load problems. I’ve compiled a list of the many mistakes developers using Ajax often make. Full text here.

We have been doing a lot of Ajax work in the projects that Tekriti is doing and are also close to announcing a real nice Ajax application for drupal which, by the way, will also be submitted to the community (more on that later!). But I liked the list compiled by Alex in the post above. What most programmers forget in the excitement of using a new technology is the usability part of it. More than often, ease of usability is the driving factor for the adoption of a web technology or a UI construct. The end-users are not really interested in how cool the technology is unless it makes life easier for them and rightly so.

Some of the common mistakes that people make with Ajax (and Alex has pointed those out in his article, I am just copying):

Using Ajax for the sake of Ajax – Use common sense whether to introduce Ajax in a particular case or not.
Not giving immediate visual cues for clicking widgets – Do inform the user that something is happening. A good example is the load button of Gmail.
Too much code makes the browser slow – Of course, please avoid the excessive use of Javascript. Javascript is good but don’t kill the browsers by loading them with excess of it.
Not using links I can pass to friends or bookmark – We all love to pass around direct links. Please make sure that your important data has a direct link.
Blocking Spidering – This is rather very interesting. Spiders want the text of the application to be somewhat static so that they can read it. Now, it does open an opportunity also. Are you up for it?

Having said all that, I do believe that if Ajax is used in its true spirit, it has a huge potential to make the web applications a lot more powerful and friendly than it is now. We, as a company, are making a strong bet on this. Watch out for this space for some cool applications coming from our side.