DON'T LET ME WAIT, USE AJAX
By the transition of web sites to web applications, user experience becomes more complicated, and caring for user experience becomes more important. While thinking about user experience you have to put yourself in the user shoes and see what he likes and what he hates, if you ask me one of the first things I hate after miss-usability Which is the DON'T LET ME THINK
part, is slow speed this problem is becoming more in web apps than in web sites.
The problem
The problem is waiting for every user request to go to the server and back with a different page. In web apps it isn't about hyperlinks any more it's about relatively complicated functionalities, let's take Flickr as an example, you got this photo you can rename, add description & add tags to it. What if every single request of those want you to wait for it to go ask the server what do you think should we do this request to the user and the server reply oh well maybe after I take a nap and they keep chatting while you are shouting Hey request I'm waiting here, will I wait every time like this?
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A bad user experience is an anti-marketing for your project first of all a user will never come back to you, then he will never recommend you and he may even warn others from you.
The solution
Yes this is it, by placing an Ajax engine between the user and the server, and boom it's solved no more waiting, read more about how it works.
Ofcourse it is not yet supported by all browsers and there have to be alternatives for browsers that blocks javascript, but it's still a big jump towards better user experience.
Check out some Ajaxed web apps.
Is it part of Web 2.0?
I believe it's not part of Web 2.0 concepts, but many web 2.0 apps couldn't exist without it, How is that?
Let's take Ta-da List as a simple example, Ta-da List is a simple app for online to-do lists imagine if it was not based on Ajax how slow would it be, a user should have to wait every time he check a box or add an item or reorder or rename, that users will prefer to do it offline rather than waiting. But Ajax is the reason this app exists.
So Ajax is not a part of Web 2.0 but it delivers the better experience that's required for Web 2.0 to exist.
November 29, 2005, 06:12 PM | AJAX , User experience , Web2.0
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Comments
1 | April 17, 2006 06:14 AM, Mostafa said:
I think AJAX is really a very big boom..
most of its problems are already solved or in progress..
but the very hard thing here that every UX designer should be aware is:
AJAX apps cant be indexed by search engines..
this is a main problem i didnt see anyone trying to solve yet!!!
as u and me trying forever to care for the entire aspects in our developed apps.. we couldnt let this problem appear in our apps, specially if they are online or for big clients who need to be indexed by search engines..
BIG UNsolved problem, ha?
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also i dont agree with u that AJAX is not a part of Web 2.0, on the contrary, it's a basic ingredient of it.. without AJAX, we couldnt ever revolutionize the old Web into the new Web 2.0.. every part of Web 2.0 is related one way or the other to AJAX, or at least considered to be best implemented using AJAX..
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