The Ajax panel covered the basics including an excellent review of the existing Ajax toolkits as well as a discussion of the negatives surrounding its usage. The panel consisted of Dylan Schiemann (Dojo, Renkoo), Dori Smith, and Jesse James Garrett (Adaptive Path). Here are the notes:
– the Ajax term is a hook for technical folks to be able to use with business people (Garrett)
– Garrett’s Ajax article expanded reach into technical audience/community; Ajax was already well known among designers
– it’s easy to shoot yourself in the foot working with Ajax; everyone will make a lot of mistakes along the way
– cross domain issues can be a real problem (Dylan)
– getting started with Ajax
- determine requirements
- find a good toolkit or existing code – Dojo, MochKit, and Prototype are all open source
- learn more about JavaScript and HTTP
– reinventing the wheel â?? DHTML universe (pdf)
– JavaScript is flexible â?? the developers of these toolkits are influenced by the language where the developers came from
- Prototype â?? Ruby
- MochKit â?? Python
- Zimbra â?? Java
- YUI (Yahoo) â?? php
- Dojo â?? JavaScript, Python, Java, PHP, etc.
– Dylan helped build Dojo to “make new mistakes”, enhance features and performance, and nothing existed at the time that met his requirements.
– Dylan’s slides for this panel are located at http://Dylan.io/swsw/ajax.pdf
– Dojo has over 30 contributors.
– Doris pointed out some of the negatives while working with Ajax and lumped them into two main categories – accessibility and usability
– what happens for people not using JavaScript – donâ??t have or turned off – they need to see something
– many technically savvy people believe JavaScript is a security nightmare, but it isnâ??t
– degradeability must be planned from the beginning; can’t add on at the end
– user expectations â?? what about the back button; people expect it to work
– users like to bookmark pages â?? this is very difficult on Ajax applications right now; need special links like Google maps (save this URL, etc.)
– must manage user expectations
– there are navigation issues; too many Ajax apps try to do too much too fast locking up resources and losing navigation
– “mystery meat navigation” â?? the UIs for Ajax are still developing; much is weird right now
– search engine friendliness â?? how much do Ajax apps give to Google, how much findability
– Ajax stands for: “JavaScript works now”
– why happening now? we know how to work with these technologies now
– the technology didnâ??t evolve that much, but the sophistication of those using it have
– Ajax is the next step, but not the last step in the evolution of web development
