Ionrock Dot Org

So, this past week I have seen three different articles bashing AJAX due to the usability issues it causes. While I do not disagree, I believe there is a huge misunderstanding regarding why it is powerful and good for the web in the long run.

The basic idea is that AJAX adds an interactive element that breaks conventional web paradigms. The usability argument against this essentially boils down to innovation forces users to change expectations. In a way this is a very bad thing. There are a myriad of users that are not very web saavy and these folks may have problems working with these new ideas. In fact these folks may have just started using the web last week and are still understanding what all the fuss is about. To this argument, I say touche.

Let's consider for a moment though what the ideas behind AJAX really means. Again there are countless articles and blogs that talk about what is great about AJAX. The essence of these is that AJAX changes the expectations of the user! If you take a minute to look at my summary of what is bad about AJAX, I think you see the obvious pattern here.

I personally think AJAX is a great technology and yes there are going to be people who use AJAX to create monstrous pieces of software that solve no problem and allow no benefit to society. There are other AJAX based applications that would be impossible to do within the confines of the traditional page paradigm see on the web currently. I am sure there were similar arguments as people started to turn from newspapers to radio and television for news. We continue to hear frustration from television news groups that the Internet is taking away viewers.

AJAX is more than a technology. It is old (again as countless articles point out). What is really innovative is the understanding and community surrounding it. Those who preach its praises are those who have lived through and become disgusted with the old ways of the web. I was fortunate to learn web development using CSS before being exposed to complicated tables and font tags. But others who experiences the early web saw the problem with these practices. Zeldman and the rest moved on toward creating pages that actually utilized the strength of XML. This progression changed from creating interesting designs to focusing on content. Information Architect and Usability were both pushed to the forefront as designers really began to understand what the real hype was around XML. In short XML makes languages for machines and people. This is what the web was meant to be and everyone seems to get it.

Now that we reached this point, the web has taken off to new directions. RSS and "tagging" take the concepts of hypertext to new levels. The folks that have been pioneering web based information are starting to see the true semantic web take form. Convention has replaced configuration to increase the speed with which new semantic practices are accepted by large groups. The next step is to move from enhancing our documents to enhancing our experience and applications. This has begun through AJAX. The idea is now the web as a platform. In other words, we are listening to the news on the radio while taking a look at the morning paper.

This is why AJAX is exciting. It is the progress of the web and it is pointless to try and stop it. Instead, we need to start looking more at how we can improve the consistency between web applications and desktop applications to create a truly seamless evironment. From a programming standpoint, we are starting to move towards having applications that can be developed like desktop applications. Events that tie to objects that are reflected in a database will soon be able to be tied together seamlessly. Users will expect to find web "applications" and web "pages". Pages can be browsed where applications can be experienced.

Considering that it has taken this long for designers and web developers to understand the real power of the web and semantic documents, I doubt that this change will confuse users any more than other innovations may. HCI and Interaction Design has been placed in the spotlight and no one will try to hide it again. People will still make mistakes, but this time an interactive web is going to really happen and I am all for it.