Ajax - when to stop

The issue of Ajax continues. To be honest right at the beginning - I am not a fan of Ajax. Or rather, not a fan of the fashion for Ajax. It’s an easy trap to fall into - Gopher space was fashionable.

The sidebar widgets scheme of WordPress provides a good testbed for the adoption of Ajax - it has all the salient pros and cons.

It’s excellent if all you want to do is fill in text boxes and shuffle things round a sidebar - flexibility within it’s own terms, absolutely. And, to be pragmatic, this is going to suit 80% of WordPress users. Which is why it’s there.

It’s not great if you want to keep XHTML valid at all costs, or if you wish to make any changes to the default sdout (and this is why the old javascript-less sidebar remains).

To be sure, the situation has improved from when the handling of Ajax by browser was sporadic, and when 30% of visitors complained of being unable to use a site properly. Hardware with less competent browsers, ie, handhelds etc, which are supposed to be the scene of expansion, are going to struggle for the forseeable future unless more thought is given to how pages degrade.

Instinctively, I suspect that that’s enough Ajax for now. I quite like pageloads - they do have their advantages, a nice, clean slate to start with.

Ajax remains dangerous and requires to be used with the utmost caution.