

Is AJAX On The Way Out? - edw519
http://www.mappingtheweb.com/2008/05/09/is-ajax-on-the-way-out/

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nathandh
Awful, egregriously bad article. Beyond wanting to tear my hair out from the
prose itself, it doesn't provide any proof to support its central thesis. "The
frenzied days of web 2.0 are over", "others believe this technology is on its
way out." Citation, please? If you just pull something out of your ass, say
so; otherwise provide some evidence for your conclusion. Is it worth pointing
out that the principal reason the author gives for AJAX being on the "way out"
is that developers misuse it? Boy, that sure hasn't stopped HTML, Flash,
Javascript, CSS...

Ugh. How did this make the front page again?

"No", indeed.

~~~
m0nty
I was thinking basically the same thing. If I'd submitted an essay like that
at college, it would have come back dripping with comments like "please
justify", "what exactly is your argument?" and that old favourite "you need to
develop your ideas".

Also, this: "The user doesn’t care about sophisticated interface features.
Locating the desired information is the primary focus." I do care very much
about sophisticated interfaces, maybe the author meant "interface bling"? I
suspect, in fact, that _is_ what was meant -- fancy but pointless DOM effects
are on their way out. We can always hope.

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izaidi
There's a lot of UI terrain we haven't explored yet, and AJAX makes more of
that terrain reachable. It seems silly to suggest it's on its way out just
because it's no longer the cool new thing.

~~~
jimbokun
This first sentence comment by itself is more informative and interesting than
the entire "article" under discussion.

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izaidi
I'm honestly a little stunned by the stagnancy of innovation in online
interfaces. It's way beyond just laziness or hewing to trends -- it's
virtually a total refusal to believe that we can do better. One of my goals
right now is to develop ideas (that is, UI setups) that question some of our
fundamental notions about what interacting with a website is supposed to look
and feel like.

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edw519
No

~~~
kirubakaran
Looks like you have been working on your points to syllables ratio ;)

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edw519
Not quite. Points per character. "No" is 50% more efficient that "lol".

~~~
kirubakaran
_> "No" is ... more efficient that "lol"_

Not if we count unique chars.

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edw519
Sorry. "No" is 50% more efficient than "wtf".

~~~
ks
You forget that you had to press "shift" to type "N". The number of key
presses are the same ;-)

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josefresco
AJAX, like Flash is a tool. Back in 2002-2004 everyone thought Flash would
take over the web. I got resumes/applications from designers who 'only' did
Flash and tried to convince me it was the future. Fast forward to today and
Flash remains a very important "tool" but only a tool and not the answer to
all our woes. AXAX is now just another tool in my virtual toolbelt, one I use
from time to time, but not something I'd base my entire site on (hmmm kind of
like javascript was in the late 90's early 00's)

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ssharp
With pretty much every creative endeavor, taste dictates the results. When
used taste and as needed, AJAX can provide great functionality. It's not going
anywhere.

The headline is just fishing for clicks.

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vikram
My suggestion would be to change the title to: How not to write an Essay.

It's one of the lamest articles to make the hacker news front page in ages.

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gruseom
This article has nothing to do with its title. In any case, the question
practically answers itself. Just look at what people are using.

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danielha
The author clearly does not know what "ajax" is. It may be a misnomer and a
buzzword, but what it means is something substantial.

This article is so, so bad.

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lsb
AJAX may be on the way out, if only that people are more interested in AJSONC
(asynchronous javascript object notation with callbacks). Most people have
realized that any code that writes XML from internal data structures can
easily write JSON, which is more useful if you're using Javascript and not
exchanging hierarchical data structures.

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johnyzee
If anything, tools like GWT will enable a whole new level of AJAX powered web
interfaces.

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david927
Yes. Or at least I hope so. I think it's convoluted, cumbersome and an
embarrassment. We can do better.

~~~
truebosko
I don't get the hate. Sure a lot of web apps abuse the hell out of it but
there's some wonderful things done with Ajax. Google Maps, Meebo are two of
the most well known. Gmail does some cool things with Ajax as well

