Javascript reintroduction
AJAX is somewhat of a tricky subject for me. I am a huge fan of good UI and of good user experience. There is no doubt in my mind that since the introduction of javascript, and later on AJAX the general experience in using the internet has improved. For me, watching Adobe's new Photoshop express is something close to a miracle. I remember the days that some image rollover was the coolest thing on the web.
That said there are some downsides to this. Nowadays to check your webmail, you most likely will need quite a modern computer and a relative new browser. The internet raised as a means to share data, and it looks to me like that feature is being pushed a bit to the back to make room for the shiny, new, apps.
There is a lot to be said for online apps. I like the idea that my office programs are always available, on every system with internet access. Its more platform independent than any virtualization technology, easier sharing then any mesh and is probably cheaper. Then again, if all I want is to find some simple information about the address of some business, or restaurant, there is no reason for me not to be able to do it on a 10 year old computer running OS/2 with netscape 1. Ok I might have gotten carried away there, but a 10 year old system with a 10 year old OS and a 10 year old browser can probably handle basic HTML. Which means it can display web pages. So it should be good enough.
Except its not. Because every damn site has bells and whistles. And the people who are the most to blame are us, the users. We want hype, cool looking pages. Hell if I get a basic HTML page I go away without even looking at the content. What goes through my mind is either "This is some crap some 40 year old did in his garage after reading the w3c tutorial" or "this cant be the right spot". So everyone got bling bling. And we end up with browsers which are turning into an OS. I am quite happy with X thank you. I don't need to run Safari OS on top of that.
Ok so I got carried away again, but you get my point.
Now that my thoughts on AJAX specifically, and javascript in general are out of the way I can turn to the subject at hand.
javascript rocks!
Last time I made web pages was hmm, almost 8 years ago. A lot have changed then. It is a wonderful thing to see how it is actually possible to make usable UI on the web with javascript. Since I am now developing java2 EE apps for a living I got into javascript. Its wonderful. And it seems a lot of people think that because there are about as much js and AJAx framweorks as there are commands in js, if not more. I knew about DOJO since it was mentioned several time on the Django page. Trying to choose one seemd to me next to impossible. So I did the only thing I could. I asked an expert. I ended up with Prototypes and Scriptalicous. The name alone would have convinced me to us scriptalicous. The fact that Mark Pilgrim did part of the developing just strengthened me in my decision. I have been using he framework for about a week now and I like it.
To sum this post up, javascript brings along a lot to the table, but it also enforces a better table. I am a UI design enthusiast. I love my javascript.