AJAX is just some lame name that someone used instead of calling it the HttpRequest object because maybe they hate Microsoft the company that funded it's creation. A framework is a framework it is not a name change, lamers! It's like PHP, you code in PHP scipting which uses the PHP(s) framework. Now you might say why I am saying this because many people who helped design the HttpRequest framework including myself hate the fact that someone would claim they did something revolutionary to the existing framework that gives them the right to change it's name. When they have not ever contributed to the core code base let alone made any significant contributions to it's development! jb
Just because someone uses the phrase Ajax, doesn't mean he's claiming to have invented anything. If you read Jesse James Garrett's Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications (where he coined the phrase), notice how it says: What was your involvement in designing XMLHttpRequest? That sounds pretty cool.
My site uses ajax extensively, its only beta whilst i tweak it for search engines.. (goto www .liquidlounge.com.au then click on the far right link "parent liquid lounge") - youll need ie for my ajax implementation to work! How the site works 1) upon first visit all i do is load up graphics and skeleton web layout 2) the user then clicks around the place which causes only that section to load. The rest of the page stays static for the request. This is a powerful concept that i dont think many search engines know how to handle. Im in some deep conversations with some of them. Consider this, my site may potentially only ever have 1 page. This page then dynamically populates various parts of itself with content based on the users clicks. Its a more powerful form of query parameters but at the level of the page elements (eg input fields, tables, divs etc can all act as content containers that will potentially get populated over time).. Full blown ajax sites will be very difficult to generate site maps or crawl as the potential for differnt page views is exponential. thoughts?
IMO, Ajax is great for sites, or part of a site, that is trying to deliver the functionality of an application (eg, word-processor, HTML designer etc). If you are using it for site navigation, then you are going to run into problems with search engines - all your pages have just one URL. And as everyone has said, the browser history is stuffed. I've checked out a few ajax chat sites, but I can't get that excited. Every client still has to poll the server every 1-2 seconds. Not very scalable.
I agree with a lot of you on the fact that AJAX should have a purpose and you CANNOT design a whole site with AJAX but you can implement it in some areas. The only reason Google Maps and Gmail can use it is because its not a website, its a web application. They dont use it in Google.com itself. And what DATA is saying is right. HttpRequest is the actual Framework of the idea, however you code it, you must use some sort of HttpRequest whether it is XMLHttpRequest or ActiveXObjects, as the article said "XMLHttpRequest" is PART of the equation, true, but AJAX is an HttpRequest its a fancy name for it, XMLHttpRequest is the object that FireFox, Opera and other browsers use to send the request while IE uses ActiveXObject. For those of you that think AJAX is the future, you're probably wrong, because it isn't that complex and it isn't really that broad a subject. I mean technically it is just a request without refreshing, however much you develop your code it won't look any different from someone else's AJAX code. Meaning there isn't much to do with it. Now something like PHP could be "the future" like a new language... AJAX isn't a language, it's just Javascript and a new javascript "object". DOM CSS, thats all extra i dont consider that part of AJAX. I designed DesignPlanet.biz using AJAX for a lot of the parts, which you can view there. It has a bunch of tutorials on AJAX too if you're interested, and it explains it in detail. However, the downside is, it is Javascript, and there will always be people disabling Javascript, and there will always be SEarch engines that can't read it. I think a language to replace Javascript would be more of a future, since javascript can get annoying >_<.