Design Notes: A CSS Web Designer’s Blog

XML/Flash slide show source

What Do I Know - Flash slide show source

This is a very useful crossfading slide show for Flash. Use it as a standalone slide show or integrate it into your project.

The author, Todd Dominey, is a prolific designer with a very interesting blog.

March 6th, 2006

AJAX for the Sake of AJAX

With all the hype recently, I am beginning to wonder if AJAX is becoming the Flash of the 1990s. We are assuming that if a Web site uses AJAX it is better, or even the best design approach. So the solution to having a “useful,” “cool,” and “engaging” Web site is to add AJAX; never mind if it actually is the best way to approach a particular design solution.

For example, there’s a new blogging platform called AJAXPress that is being developed with a PHP/MySQL server-side component and an AJAX client-side solution. While it is interesting to watch a Web site display a “Loading . . .” graphic, I wonder what the difference is between watching a graphic and text proclaiming that your content is being loaded and waiting while my browser fetches another page.

The big thing that AJAX is supposed overcome is browser wait time, and yet it often does not succeed in this. Here comes another redundant Web design solution that will bloat many Web sites and actually help a few when it is done with careful planning that determines it actually IS the best solution for the problem at hand.

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March 6th, 2006