Things That Are Good for Ajax
- Form validation
This is almost a no-brainer. It's so much nicer when the form tells you as you are typing if you've filled it out wrong or not. Having to go to the server and then return an error message is not only old, it's slow. Leave the server validation in the form, that's important for accessibility. But for those who can support Ajax, tell them right away. - Comments
Comments on blogs or even just articles are a great use of Ajax. Comments can change all the time, and especially when a commenter hits the comment button, it's nice to see the comment appear immediately on the page. - Filtering data
If you've got a large table with a lot of data in it, a nice application for Ajax is to add filters and sorters to the table. Getting your Web table to act more like Excel is really useful to people. - Surveys and polls
When you click on your vote, the poll would just switch to show you the results. And before you comment, About doesn't yet support Ajax on our polls - but it sure would be nice. Maybe we can give the About.com developers an "Ajax call" of our own. :)
What to Do When You Get the "Ajax Call"
Talk to your boss or marketing department to find out why they want to use Ajax on the Web site. Once you understand the reasons for why they want it, you can then work on finding a suitable application for it.
Remind both your boss that your customers come first, and that accessibility is not just a word. If they don't care whether your site is accessible to customers, then remind them that search engines don't care for Ajax, so they won't get as many pageviews.
Start small. Build a something easy first before worrying about building an entire new Web application from scratch. If you can get something Ajaxian onto your Web site, that might be all your boss or marketing department needs to meet their goals. It is definitely possible to put up an Ajax application that is actually useful, but only if you think about how to do it first.
Did you find this article useful? Make a comment.
