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16 Comments
- scoreboard27, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10AJAX certainly has its place in the toolbox of every designer, but AJAX for the sake of AJAX reminds me of Flash for the sake of Flash. It's great when people get to the client's site, but if they need to rely on search engines to deliver a large portion of their audience, the pimptastic designer has just cut them off at their knees by burying all that no unindexable content and uncrawlable navigation. AJAX is the icing, not the cake.
- Veritas77, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9Step 1: Write your site to function completely and perfectly without using Javascript/AJAX
Step 2: Add in the Javascript/AJAX after completing Step 1.
I've found the use of a front controller/app controller makes this task pretty easy. - BoneyB, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Yes, everything here is a conspiracy
- antiver, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Basically, the article suggests you use as little AJAX as possible. :(
- str3ama, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5Everyone and their Grandmother uses AJAX. But I actually prefer it that way, we can avoid the excessive reloads and only load just the necessary information. It's the way the Internet should have been built from the start..but I guess no one had any idea how popular the idea would become.
- scottschiller, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3[ General Disclaimer(?): I work for Yahoo!, these are my own thoughts etc. ]
I think it's best to put semantic data, valuable information that needs to indexed, where it was designed to be - in HTML. Nice thought-out, meaningful and structured markup is loved by all search engines, and I think the search results seen today generally reflect that.
If you can, put all of your important information in HTML and then use CSS + Javascript to "prettify" (1) and enhance (2) the experience. Ultimately you shouldn't require either of the latter two technologies to get the core information across, but that can be a tough balance between backend services, project deadlines and so on.
Another way of putting this (the bad things), might be, don't use Javascript to document.write() or .innerHTML out "core" content grabbed from XHR, that sort of thing. A great way to avoid this is to build a static mock of your page first, with raw HTML.. *Then* enhance.
Perhaps relevant, I've ranted about this in past years. Pardon the lengthy URL.
http://www.schillmania.com/content/opinion/2004/06/27/the_obligatory_standards_rant/ - bpapa, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2"I always thought that AJAX and other javascript stuff was supposed to be a "progressive enhancement" thing: as in, your page should work without it, but when it's there it enables the cool little extra bits. Am I wrong in that assumption?"
Indeed, it is supposed to be that way. The thing is though, project managers and the ilk don't give a ***** about it being an enhancement for some users, and instead want it to be THE way to use their site and they want it done as quickly as possible. So you end up with sites that only work when js is turned on. - durandal2005, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Right on. I've seen sites that load the main content via AJAX, and there's no reason for it. It's not semantic, it slows down the loading process (it splits up what would be one HTML request into multiple AJAX requests), and it can't be indexed by anything without javascript.
I always thought that AJAX and other javascript stuff was supposed to be a "progressive enhancement" thing: as in, your page should work without it, but when it's there it enables the cool little extra bits. Am I wrong in that assumption? - addicted68098, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Any content you want a search engine to grab shouldn't be grabbed with Ajax. Ajax is great for gmail and calenders and other web applications but for showing general information like posts on a blog its terrible, since many browsers don't use Ajax.
- andr3, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1One of the biggest issues when Ajax is on the table is screenreaders and blind users. Remember that crawlers like google are blind and also, usability is important for every one of us, even if you're lucky enough to have your eyes working.
How do you bookmark an instance of the app you're using? GMaps has it covered, but not the majority of the websites using good ol' xmlhttprequest out there...
Also, back button, opening in new tabs/windows, etc....
All these things matter to all of us, not just crawlers and screenreaders.
Also.. the article is a good summary for the presentation Jeremy Keith has given on XTech. Check out his books, both Dom Scripting and Bulletproof Ajax. - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1which I disagree with. Yes there is a time and place for it, but surely people still remember before google maps, where you could either click somewhere on the image map and it would centre that, or you could click left, right, up or down to move an entire map. Surely people remember their old yahoo or hotmail accounts where you would have to reload the page (or at least the frame) after clicking inbox. Surely people remember the days of filling out a form, clicking submit then having the form display again with asterisks next to the fields you missed.
Having AJAX allows the web browser to interact much more like a standard application in a web application, dynamically disabling controls or hiding sections of the UI. Of course accessibility should be a priority, and it is really your own fault if you hide your indexable content behind AJAX. - chipsotoole, on 10/11/2007, -3/+310 comments on 141 diggs. That's 7%. Not great, but well within reason.
- jhecht, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0I believe that AJAX is a necessary thing that any developer, nube or expert, needs to know when they do a job. My main issue with the constant AJAX discussions is the same argument : "Search Engines can't get your content." Well honestly, I don't much care. Especially if the application is something along the lines of Gmail, where it's all personal information anyway, then i don't see why i would want my inbox to be cached. I mean if you are doing some things like having all the links change to javascript links, then i could see where that could be possibly quite annoying. However, i don't see how it's bad to have a few links update the main content page on your site, especially if it's like a corporate site(you know, web server site or something) that is image heavy as all hell. I dont like having to wait for all those images to load again, AJAX in those cases would save huge amounts of time. And honestly, if you must use AJAX for EVERYTHING, please, think of the people who heard all of those bad things about Javascript security a while back and have it disabled, create permalinks instead.
- allankh, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0If I could dig you up more, I would :)
- antiver, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1Articles advertises "Hijax": http://domscripting.com/presentations/xtech2006/ (link from article)
- gbarger, on 10/11/2007, -7/+2Hmmm...107 votes and only a few comments. I think someone is paying for votes.
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