AJAX - A paradigm shift
Hearing about all the new AJAX functionality that Microsoft’s Atlas allows us to easily implement got me thinking about how to effectively leverage it.
While most of the improvements to ASP.NET, Visual Studio, etc. enable us to do what we’ve been doing faster and more efficiently, AJAX really changes the game by altering the very foundation on which we build website applications.
The OLD Way – Submit Forms / Receive Pages
The NEW Way – Submit Requests / Receive Data
What this means is that we can selectively update portions of the page without causing the entire browser to refresh (a postback), effectively making the web run much more like a desktop application. This functionality provides for better user interfaces and richer client experiences.
Thanks to frameworks like Atlas, much of the technical hurdles can be easily overcome but there’s another underlying problem. How do we design, architect, or wireframe for AJAX-enabled sites? A typical design or wireframing process involves mapping out each page in the site and defining what types of content it contains. What happens with AJAX however, is that portions of the content, site functionality, and elements requiring user interaction can now take place without the need for a separate page.
In my humble opinion, this represents a new way of thinking and a significant shift in the way we approach building a site. As developers on the cutting edge of employing this new technology I think it’s also part of our job to work with the designers and architects to figure out the best way to create the user interface using all of the tools we now have at our disposal.
1 Comments
Designing for Flash is similar in that you can trigger events and interact with users and databases without doing a post or a refresh.
Posted by: Nik | April 15, 2006 3:53 PM