1. Web 2.0/AJAX is nothing new, but there are more and more companies or web developers putting these buzzwords on their web site without any knowledge of these techniques.
2. The wrong use of Web 2.0/AJAX will prevent some users to visit your web application. If you want to make all of your visitors happy you have to build two versions of your web application (i.e. if JavaScript is disabled). This we had to do in the past, too! Do you remember? If you are using controls or frameworks that will do this for you automatically and the correct way you are fine, I didn't find any.
3. Using frameworks for AJAX is a great thing, because you don't have to look for all the details and problems. I found some web pages using frameworks that bloated the traffic to save some bytes when invoking AJAX methods. Use Fiddler to calculate the complete traffic your web application is using and how much you will save if you are using AJAX. The same is true for Web 2.0 frameworks. Sometimes it is easier to use your own JavaScript instead of big JavaScript files (where you only need about 1%).
4. You should watch out for updates of your web application. If you are using AJAX there may be requests during your update that may fail. Use error handling where you can. Have a deep look inside your code (and the source code of your used frameworks) if interfaces will change. A new version can stop old opened web pages running.
5. More and more web sites using AJAX to completly update the page without a postback. If you press F5 (reload) you will be on a different page. Yes, I know there are some frameworks/libraries that are working correct. If I want to open the "Contact Us" link in a new window (Shift + Click) it will fail, too. Have a deep look on your log files and track visitor ways.

10 Comments

• Abdu said Wednesday, June 21, 2006 4:08:18 PM

  You hate Web because 2.0/AJAX is nothing new? So? Do you hate the technology itself or do you the fact that it didn't get all the hype early on? Maybe Ajax has some nuances or shortcoming but I wouldn't go all the way and say I "hate" it. I hope you do not prefer postbacks for every click! Abdu

• Dave said Wednesday, June 21, 2006 4:12:50 PM

  Sounds like you don't hate AJAX at all. Just poorly designed sites which I can agree with.

• rodrigo diniz said Wednesday, June 21, 2006 5:05:54 PM

  I dont think anybody browses with javascript disabled.Because if they do 90 % of the web sites wont work and I am not talking about AJAX sites. I dont think of any site that has a form that dont use javascript.

• Gabriel Lozano-Moran said Wednesday, June 21, 2006 6:07:05 PM

  Ajax is a great thing. A technique that is has come back alive because of the fact that nowadays almost everybody has a broadband connection. I must admit though that a lot of people are abusing it meaning that they are overusing it. They will tend to use it everywhere they can just to use it.

• interactive said Wednesday, June 21, 2006 6:55:02 PM

  Yes, I love AJAX, I have build my Ajax.NET Professional, but I'm very in trouble when I look around what developers are doing with this hype, nothing else than "be part of it", regardless if they use it correct. And I got a statitic about internet usage here in Germany, and there are still a lot of internet users that do not have a fast connection. At home I have only 1 MBit, too far away from the city. I will look at this statistic and give you a short report. I think that Germany is not at the top of the most used broadband connections, but there are lots of other countries still with bad internet connections.

• shunjie said Thursday, June 22, 2006 10:55:31 AM

  Look at the frameworks around like .NET, JSF, etc. If javascript is disable, nothing works. But some website are of course OVER USING it. A website that just ajax just to the right amount will be Flickr. There are a lot of other bad example, and i think I need not to mention them by name

• Josh Gough said Saturday, June 24, 2006 12:36:56 AM

  How well do WebForms work with JavaScript turned off? ASP.NET 1.0 + ? I have never tried it.

• Adrian Leishman said Tuesday, June 27, 2006 1:22:10 PM

  You really must decide if your site(s) are going to cater to non-javascript surfers. There comes a point where paranoid ("security conscious") web users just aren't worth the added expense... losing their business/traffic may be an acceptable "expense".

• Parshu said Thursday, June 29, 2006 10:53:31 AM

  I was wondering how much Ajax is Search Engine friendly. Since there are no pages for bots to dig into how are they going to index those pages and list on popular searh engines like google ? I'm trying to figure out a way with which i can make it SEO friendly, any ideas ?

• Anthony said Friday, June 30, 2006 4:20:05 AM

  What's the 'hate' about? We're customer driven and our customers 'like' the technology.