Shedding some light on Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)

What is Ajax?

Not only is Ajax a dominant Dutch football club that's won the Champions League 4 times and a household cleaner, it's also a web technology. Actually, it's a collection, or suite, of web technologies (you might have noticed that JavaScript and XML are both in the title). As such, the pieces of the puzzle were already in place before Jesse James Garrett pulled them together in 2005 and there's some overlap here between the JavaScript and XML pages I've put together. I have tried on this page to be specific to Ajax and not it's components. What's significant about Ajax is the "paradigm shift" that it represents (Matlis).

The bottom line on usability:

Because Ajax is designed with W3C recommendations in mind it works well accross browsers. However, since Ajax is really a suite and not just one tool, expect to spend a lot of time learning if you don't already know JavaScript and XML.

More on Usability:

Since Ajax is so complicated, whether an example will work on a browser is more-or-less a case by case basis. Sometimes sites bar there doors to certain browsers. LAUNCHcast, part of Yahoo! Music, is famous for this, only playing on IE in Windows and Netscape BC 27 (or something like that) on the Mac. Yahoo! still shuts doors to their new mail system that uses Ajax to anything other than Firefox, IE and SeaMonkey (old Mozilla).

This is what it looks like in Camino:

Yahoo! putting the smackdown on Camino Yahoooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Here's a video if you want to learn a little bit more:

REFERENCES

Websites

QuickStudy: AJAX. [Internet]. Framingham, MA: Matlis J; c2005 [cited 2007 May 1]. Available from http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=103025&pageNumber=1

Books

Robbins JN. 2006. Web design in a nutshell, third editition. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, Inc. 796 p.

Pages 195-197, 581, 605-608, 616. Index entry on 758.

Scholarly Articles

Disabato NJ, Marchionini G. 2006. The effects of Ajax web technologies on user expectations: A workflow approach. A Master's Paper for the M.S. in I.S degree. UNC SILS Master's Papers Apr:1-51.

This article deals with the "change" facet of web technologies. This is not an aspect well covered in my pathfinder, other than the clear speed at which materials on the web date. The issue for the web designer is, of course, which technologies to use at a given time. It's likely some audiences will change at different rates (techies vs. non-techies, for instance), but Disabato's sample size of 13 did not allow for classing of individuals. Disabato's research method was different that the other articles here in that he used biometric feedback for his results as well as surveys. Given the timeliness of the article, the discussion on further research is particularly interesting in this article, beginning on page 38. He suggests further research on or using cognitive interrupts, eye-tracking and different patterns of technology introduction.

Author Abstract:This paper aims to define users' information expectations as web technologies continue to improve in loading time and uninterrupted interface interactivity. Do web technologies like Ajax-or, more abstractly, a quicker fulfilling of user needs- change these needs, or do they merely fulfill preexisting expectations? Users navigated through a mock e-commerce site where each page that loads has a 50% chance of implementing Ajax technology, from functions of the shopping cart to expanding categories of products. Users were observed through eye tracking and measuring their pulse and respiratory effort. Questionnaires were administered before and after these tasks to assess their thoughts about the study. Qualitative and quatitative observation found users almost unanimously favored the Ajax functions over the non-Ajax. Users emphasized the usability concerns of switching to Ajax, especially concerning feedback. FULL TEXT (PDF)

Lerner RM. 2006. At the forge: JavaScript, Forms and Ajax. Linux Journal (150):8.

HTML copy available through the ACM digital library. The article doesn't refer to Ajax or XML, explicitly, as the article is actually part of a series. I mention it here only for the disclaimer and because it does reference Ajax books.

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