Travis Swicegood

A case against AJAX?

Published On
June 03 2005
Author
Travis Swicegood
Author's NoteWarning, this is a tech-post. If programming isn't your thing, feel free to wonder around elsewhere.

There's been an inordinate amount of buzz about AJAX in the last few months. Everybody's looking to do something with it. There have been a few people who genuinely don't seem to care for it consider it a potential liability due to its intricacies, but today is the first time I read a post that I agreed with 100%. Marcus Baker of SimpleTest made some observations. In his post he argues that most of the uses are actually going against learned behavior. To boil his case down, he's pointing out that AJAX is great in environments where you're striking out in new territory or where you're trying to mock existing behavior (moving from a desktop app to a web app for example), but to use AJAX for the sake of using AJAX defeats its usefulness.

The post is definitely worth the read if you're interested in AJAX and how it can be used.

About

Travis Swicegood is a professional programmer and owner of Domain51, a web development company with a focus on non-profits, NGOs, and online activists. He doesn't change the world, he supports those who do.

He has personal a focus on web applications, performance, and stability; is author of Pragmatic Version Control using Git; and working on his second book. He has been using PHP; since '99 and still remembers how revolutionary PHP 4 was, but can't remember why. He's a TDD, open-source, and open government advocate—sometimes called a zealot—and lurker on many an open-source project mailing list when not learning other programming; languages; for fun, exploring his surroundings on bike, or tasting his latest kitchen and home-brew creations.

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