Do you use AJAX, RIA, or other Web 2.0?
Do you think AJAX made the web easier to use? What are some of your favorite AJAX frameworks? I would like to know how companies are using AJAX to improve usability, interaction and collaboration.
Clarification added September 16, 2007:
RIA = rich internet applications
Good Answers (19)
Bill S
Vice President /General Manager Shippers Warehouse & Managing Dir. for Atlanta Supply Chain Inc. 20,000 Connections
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Hi Eric:
I think of this as HTML
I have seen that Ajax frameworks may enable more rapid development than a direct Ajax frameworks, it could be with less control. One item that is key that an Ajax part of a should framework provides the following:
* customization
* skinning facilities, where appearance can be changed without affecting behavior or layout programmatic control
*extensibility—creation of new components based on other components, it is important that the component-based framework will not lost
Check out ruby rails too.
Regards,
Bill Stankiewicz
Vice President and General Manager
Shippers Warehouse of Georgia
Office: 678-364-3475
Williams@shipperswarehouse.com
there are significant issues around the browser back button in Ajax UI's which have an impact on complex enterprise applications. We therefore only use AJAX in discrete workflows which are contained within one web app. Single sign on gives access to multiple applications and ajax has given us some headaches around this....
Henk-Jan V
Engagement manager, insurance & project management consultant, seasoned editor & blogger
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Yes, in several projects AJAX is implemented on websites, causing a shift in web development paradigms. Yes, in some respects client-server concepts seem back from the '90s, including issues on performance, access management and architectural requirements about data-presentation division.
RIA is another concept, which can be implemented in several ways, from classic embedded Flash components, modern day widgets to supported workflows and rich (intelligent) web based dialogues.
Web 2.0 is another broad defined term, which can be implemented in hundreds of ways. My portal and weblog are just a few examples of this concept. You'll find a couple of AJAX, RIA implementations on them too.
Links:
Saurabh C
Co-Founder/CEO, Neev Information Technologies Pvt Ltd
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AJAX has definitely made the web easier. I belong to the crowd using 'AJAX' before the acronym got coined and have learnt the obvious thing - you can overdo a good thing. Ability to bookmark resources is really key on the web and one should stay away from AJAX if it is getting in the way.
A good AJAX usecase for me is - in place edit and saving of form data. AJAX avoids the reload of the complete page and improves usability. Another good usecase is reordering a list by drag-n-drop and persisting the order on the server in the background.
RIA for me constitutes flash, flex, silverlight in combination with AJAX. Sometimes only AJAX will suffice and sometimes you can make a flex only app. Ideally I prefer to keep stuff lightweight and use flash for charts, reports, audio/video and let it interact with HTML/AJAX. It depends on the use cases though.
I am listing a few resources below for AJAX.
Links:
Ayssar A
Owner/Director Q-DAR development | architecture | research, urbatect, writer
Ajax has made the web more intuitive to use, if not easier. A few years ago when i was developing my first application, as a self-taught programmer, i used javascript instead of server-side interactivity to create an incredibly smooth CMS. i did that because i knew very little serve-side scripting, and because i thought that would be the way to do it. a few years later, that technology has a tagname, AJAX, and it is that much easier to integrate in RIA.
Jquery is my current framework of choice. again, it is extremely intuitive, very powerful, and very elegant. it is i think also the most secure and most complete of the current ajax frameworks out there.
I agree with Igor though, if Flex or Silverlight manage to achieve the ubiquity of Flash, they will win. It is still early to tell though. Perhaps the trick now is to find the best way to bridge between "ajax" and these new frameworks.
My company (24sevenoffice.com) have developed AJAX applications for 4-5 years. Ajax doesn't make the web easier to use but makes it possible to develop RIA that are fast and intuitive enough to compete with desktop applications. We have testet all known AJAX frameworks and ended up using Jack Slocum's EXT. A great framework that gives the requiered flexibilit to build complex RIAs. You should also check out what these friends of mine are developing. MS VisualStudio compatible and way faster and better than ASP .NET AJAX. They still have a way to go regarding UE but the framework has some real potential.
Links:
John T. W
Intrepreneur
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We use AJAX for a lot of our intranet sites and workflow web applications. It has been very helpful for our business and made the web experience for our end users significantly improve. We have poor bandwidth in some locations and being able to prevent entire page loads on postbacks but just focus specifically on small bits of information in a callback has enabled a very rich application feature set.
We have been using Microsoft's .NET 2.0 for our development and used the AJAX framework that comes with Microsoft, however we have also purchased the ComponentArt Web.UI tool kit which also comes with it's own AJAX calls built in. I'm open to my developers making the right choice for the right reasons versus telling them what they have to use on a website.
Some of the things we have done is to allow interactive Q&A thread spawns within an approval process workflow so that users are able to post and receive messages on the page using AJAX as a midstream process in the approval chain. Other areas are to update grid information closer to realtime without page refreshes. We keep audit trails up to date so that as a change happens the audit trail reflects it immediately on screen.
We also use this for complex calculations rules and business processes that are fragmented so instead of doing a complete reload and manage the state of the workflow we are able to incrementally call a particular method to aid in the overall process without trying to manage a state change from a postback.
Henrik B
CEO at TriGemini - [LION] TopLinked
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I'm using AJAX extensively in my web applications (.NET based).
The way I'm using AJAX is to incorporate it in components (controls) that can easily be reused within applications and using AJAX in these has really been an eye-opener. E.g. on a page I wanted to make it possible for users to upload files (and see these). However such functionality requires several pages and page reloads, using AJAX I've removed all page reloads and combined it all in a single control which can be put on a page. The end result is: much better user experience and not at least very very easy to use and reuse on other projects.
One thing to keep in mind is whether the code will work in different browsers etc. Life is too short for these concerns, therefore I rely on commercial components for the low-level AJAX (to ensure cross-browser compatibility).
I think of it as more of hack into good old HTML. HTML made the internet work - with the availbaility of XMLHTTPRequest object developers got creative and started implementing Page component updates without refreshing the page. UI presentation is still done in HTML and code in Javascript.
Its high time these 2 needs an update. Yeah, it still works but poses as much as constraints as well. Ask a javascript developer how difficult it is to write and maintain javascript code. This is the reason why so many toolkits are available.
To me, Silverlight/Flex are right step in the evolution of HTML/Javascript - they are backed by solid programming languages and come with robust developer tools. However to increase adoption they need to be controlled by a standards body. One can counter argue that XUL is not owned by anybody still it doesnt have reach - true, thats where standard body needs to evangelize it a bit more.
AJAX has certainly *allowed* for more usable and interactive web applications, but it has also made it far easier to produce something that looks visually stunning with terrible usability.
The other thing to consider is accessibility, which suffers in AJAX-heavy interfaces if the developers have not properly considered the implications of things like DIV popups and content changing in different areas of the page.
AJAX has certainly made the web easier for some people, but also harder for others. It doesn't have to be like this though. Web developers just need to consider accessibility while they design their interfaces.
Brian M
at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
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I've used some DOJO and Prototype so it's AJAX for me. The main problem I see is the bloat of disjointed JavaScript files that are slowing pages down. When you couple this with the (wrong in my opinion) use of framesets to serve ads, we have some problems to work through.
Regards
Brian MacLeod
Lets not mix our metaphors here. AJAX, Flex, Silverlight, and JavaFX are all simply tools for developing RIAs'. As such, RIA tools shouldn't be confused with end user experience (UX).
Regardless of what RIA technology you use, organisations can still create poor UX.
UXMatters defines user experience as "the integration of interaction design, industrial design, information architecture, visual interface design, instructional design, and user-centered design, ensuring coherence and consistency across all of these design dimensions. User experience design defines a product's form, behavior, and content."
Too many companies are jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, thinking that all they need is a SOA with a SOC, and they've suddenly addressed all their usability issues - which simply isn't the case.
With that in mind, if you're looking to improve the usability, interaction and collaboration of an application you first need to start by appraising the core UX aspects of your application - then chosing the toolset/technology that best addresses the shortfalls.
Matt Voerman
Senior Consultant
Adobe Systems Inc.
Links:
Our company, ObjectiveGUI, provides a package that lets developpers easily design, validate and deploy Webservices/Ajax transaction scenarios.
This is particularly efficient connecting SGBDs on an Intranet. It is platform-proof, presentation proof, and the GUI is validated against each UC datamodel. RIAs are also used, but the plot here is rather to be found in flexibilty, standardisation and maintainability benefits.
It is used by the Belgian National Institutions for Human Resource self-service applications.
Regarding UX, our package enforces acknowledged usability patterns like transaction confirmation, input validation, etc. We also provide a complete a deep and structured separation between data and presentation.
Also, we tamed the 'back button' and 'single logon' problems evoked hereunder in the stack of reflexions about AJAX.
Links:
We use AJAX for our Donation management system application. It has provided us a very strong way of presenting our application's functinalities. We use TIBCO's GI framework and is integrated to a .NET web service application layer.
Our design consideration was very simple - We wanted a simple server installation to handle the presentation layer - without any links to .NET /Java or any server side capable language. We checked DOJO, YUI, Qooxdoo and many others - finally zeroed in on TIBCO. While the others are good - but we felt TIBCO has a more focused development. They provide a complete cycle - from user interfaces to interacting with a application server (SOAP or XML). They also provide a RAD to build elegant user interfaces.
Ease of Development: There is a RAD to build the application and it is quite powerful.
Widgets: The framework comes built in with power packed widgets for a desktop like look and feel - including Dialogs, Matrix/Grids/Lists, Treeviews, Datetime pickers etc.,,
Design Considerations: The presentation layer can be idependent and can easily be built using their powerful RAD usnig only Javascript, XML, XSL and HTML - The business layer can be .NET or Java or any server side capable language. Since it is RAD driven there is scope to maintain standards for all the UI's.
What's more it comes as an Open source.
Links:
>Do you think AJAX made the web easier to use?
In some cases, where used correctly, yes. In others, it is largely eye candy that hides what is happening.
>What are some of your favorite AJAX frameworks?
I use the .NET framework now, as I develop in .NET. Prior to it being complete, I used some other frameworks. If we go back far enough, I coded JavaScript on top of XmlHttp as early as 1999, so it is not new technology, just technology that has finally been invested in.
>I would like to know how companies are using AJAX to improve usability,
>interaction and collaboration.
More usability, as you can lead the user to the right answer. Beyond this, it is more a feeling than a help.
As for other technologies, it will be interesting to see if Flex (framework for Flash if distilled down) or Silverlight will "win". That is really where web 2.0 starts.
For our biggest application, we've recently started to use AJAX. However, we only use it unobtrusively, no weird flashy stuff. For this, we use prototype. So far, even though a lot of our clients are in dutch government who may not be using the latest versions of browsers, we've had no complaints of problems with the functioning of our application, even though we in some places used it without any graceful degradation fallback. I therefore deem it safe enough to use such technology in more places in our application where it's truely functional.
Yet, still, and I can not emphasize this enough, we only use it there where it's truely functional, as the only reason to really use it is there where the user will actually have a better experience thanks to the usage of AJAX technology.
Links:
Stephen B
Technical Product Owner for Risk Manager product at Lumension Security
Best Answers in: Web Development (3)
AJAX, Flash, etc allow for applications that are "close enough" to desktop apps - gmail, google maps, basecamp, etc.
I like Yahoo's toolkit. It's the best supported of the major frameworks, they provide free hosting of it, and provide some great documentation. They all basically do the same thing.
At Secrurityworks, we deploy enterprise risk management software as a webapp - without AJAX is just wouldn't work from the web.
In any situation, you need to fit the right tools to the problem. What's important - accessibility, compatibility, performance, slickness, etc... Use technology to solve real problems, not just to use it.
Before AJAX we used some tips'n'tricks such as hidden frames to achieve what AJAX is allowing us to do currently.
Generaly I think this is a real great step in web technology. A step forward of course. Mostly becouse it allows us to move the desktop, always-connected applications to the web.
Of course - I've seen examples where some pages were even "over-AJAXized" - e.g. the full CMS systems, in which all the page content is loaded via AJAX. Come on - if we are trying to use AJAX to retrieve 10 times more content, then the one we will leave on the client side - it's mad. But every technology must be used with extensive usage of the brain of person, that uses it. And AJAX - once used where it really gives us something - is (as I said before) a great technology and a great step in the overall evolution of Web and Internet itself.
Alexis A
Information Architect | Usability Consultant | User Researcher
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Although AJAX is a wonderful technology/development technique and has added a lot of value to the web, overall, I don't think it has made the web easier or more intuitive to use. Most of the folks here are in the technology field and are on the high end of computer and web savvy, and so for you, AJAX may make your applications easier to use. But for many Internet users, AJAX features and functionality are still working their way into mental models of how to interact with websites and online apps. So, it has added complexity that can be confusing or frankly "too much" sometimes. That being said, we're moving in the right direction and more and more users are finding websites with this technology more and more useful. There are ways to use AJAX that are alot more usable than others. It just needs to be a gradual process and, of course, needs usability testing to know for sure if it's usable.
More Answers (9)
I think, AJAX is kind of ‘back in the future’ remembering good old client-server times. It is a step in the right direction, especially if we are talking about data entry application.
However, I think RIA like Flex or Silverlight will win especially in the controlled environment.
I agree that AJAX has been a significant step in making web based application UI's more intuitive. Personally, I find Ruby Rails to be compelling.
Jenny-Rebecca S
Strategic Communications Professional, Social Media Contributor, Business Owner
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Jenny-Rebecca S suggests this expert on this topic:
Eric,
I suggest you speak with Jason Schmitt who published a book earlier in the year on AJAX and Web security and is a frequent columnist on the application. You can see a review of his book here: http://mcpmag.com/reviews/books/article.asp?EditorialsID=159
My company has been working with AJAX frameworks eversince this term surfaced on internet. AJAX is the key to great usability and most of modern websites utilize AJAX to provide rich user interface. It has it's issues as pointed out by others but people have found workaround to most of those problems. Gmail is a good example of how AJAX is being utilized and problems being handled.
Links:
Paul C
President, CEO at WinCorp Software, Inc. and Owner, WinCorp Software, Inc.
I too was experimenting with Asynchronous Javascript even before it was known as AJAX. It certainly can add some improved user interface interactions, but it certainly isn't the panacea that some try to make it out to be, especially for the platform incompatibilities and other reasons previously mentioned.
Even with the visual enhancements possible with CSS, the traditional "web look" for web apps is getting long in the tooth. Currently, I'm leaning towards FLEX for my RIA/Web 2.0 development.
I use AJAX to make some validations appear more nicer. But also for simple tasks as limiting lists, pagination and preloading data from different location.
It should improve the usabilty of an (web)application. I personally love JQuery, but Dojo also has my intresst. I use Mootools only for a quick fix for a nice visual effect, but not for a real application.
Links:
As Greg Sherwood argues below, Ajax provides a powerful new tool with which we can create both more usable web experiences and more frustrating ones. In the short term, some Ajax-based designs will cause confusion for many users as design standards are disrupted, and designers experiment with ways to exploit the new possibilities. Ultimately, as designers converge on new standards for Ajax-based interaction, and people adjust to these standards, we should see the new approach yeilding more and more positive solutions.
Hi,
our group of developers use AJAX and flex, both have a good tools for the web developments, but the choose of one or other depend of what do you need to do.with flex you ahve with less code, rich web application and a powerful tools but you are using flash technologies. with AJAX you have the control of all what happening and the freedom to do whatever you want,integrating deferents languages (php,asp,etc..) but the process of build a "nice" application is more complicated .
Regards,
Shadow.
We are currently changing from Laslo to Adobe Flex for our RIA apps that are replacements for legacy Swing Applets.
