Jimmy Bogard: "Ajax is used very, very sparingly." What for?

Question

I saw a lot of links to how Jimmy Bogard and his team make websites. One of the things in his article about how they see models is that they use Ajax “very, very economically.” But I really don’t see in it the details of why - or what they are doing instead.

For me, Ajax - when everything is done well - is what makes the user on the website super fluid and seamless. I understand that the user does not need to wait much, if at all, for Ajax to respond to the methods. But it sounds as if it should be avoided, if possible, at all costs.

Can someone help me understand the odors of using Ajax and the alternatives that should be used instead?

Answer 1

I think this post is deprecated (2009). Today, half the Internet is AJAX. See Google, facebook, twitter, stackoverflow and all "web applications".

Perhaps in 2009 this was not a good practice, because:

• IE6
• slow browsers
• search engines did not use AJAX.
• users were not ready for AJAX.
• standard and cross-browser issues.
• XML and JSON were not widely distributed.

Today there is a good framework to help you improve ajax (jQuery) web applications. If the web development team is looking for an employee, the criterion is HTML5, minimum AJAX. So don't be afraid of ajax.

Answer 2

Full quote from the article:

AJAX is used very, very sparingly. Compliance with Section 508 Required

This is the only mention of AJAX throughout this article, and is linked to section 508.

Section 508 focuses on accessibility for people with disabilities. For example, if you use a screen reader, it will read what is visible on the screen, and nuances such as finding and stuff may not be available.

I do not accept “AJAX sparingly” in this article as something more general than his (implied) interference with accessibility.

Answer 3

I think that most of the struggle with AJAX, especially at an early stage, was a tendency to use it for EVERYTHING. The standard browser behavior will be cursed. Therefore, according to many developers, AJAX meant that user expectations were just “hips” or something like that. However, I think that it is ripe for a stable, powerful and well-accepted method now to save user states, settings, filters or, basically, everything that does not guarantee a full page refresh.

Answer 4

I think you hit a nail on the head in your statement "when everything ended well." Create an HTML-only site, and then use JavaScript to improve the user interface for most of the people who activated it. Give people who have the latest browsers the best experience for everyone. In modern JS infrastructures, development overheads should not be noticeable! There are many cases where a Javascript dependency has been introduced that is not even needed, and in some cases actually destroys the user interface. Javascript / Ajax does not define a good user interface, but it can ruin it.