Archive for March, 2006
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
The results are in from this week’s (it was more like two weeks) poll.
Companies that blog are:
1. more open to client concerns than most (60% agreed with this)
2. more trustworthy than other businesses (no one agreed with this)
3. are just the same as other businesses (40% agreed with this)
So there you have it, at least some people believe that a company that blogs is more receptive to their feedback.
This Week’s Poll
The best Web sites:
1. Don’t make me wait.
2. use animation, audio, and video. Speed is secondary.
Please vote! I’ll tally the results next week.
March 5th, 2006
Goals of updating the interface: remove UI elements that aren’t useful to majority of users - increase usability of elements that are useful - increase focus on web content.
This doesn’t surprise me that Firefox is revamping its look and feel since IE7 will add a slick new interface and many RSS enhancements. Firefox needs to show that it can evolve as well, even though it still is well ahead of the IE7 Beta 2 that I am using. I just hope they remember to keep it simple AND functional.
Of course, Firefox will be likely to stay ahead of IE7 no matter what it does when it comes to third party extensions. Its open source philosophy helps immensely with community involvement and development.
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March 3rd, 2006
Over the last couple of days, I spent hours trying to use DOM techniques to change captions for a Javascript slide-show in a way that respected HTML tags embedded in the text.
Using the DOM to keep the code clean was easy. But it wasn’t easy to find a way that allowed users to include HTML tags in the captions. Javascript DOM nodeValue simply changed everything into HTML entities and the tags displayed uselessly as HTML text. Nothing I did worked.
Finally, I emailed a friend who agreed to tackle the problem. 10 minutes later the solution was in place. What was the solution? innerHTML.
This method is not technically standards compliant, but has huge cross-browser support and was by far the best solution for this problem. Go figure. Playing it safe and using standards compliant techniques isn’t always the best way to approach programming and design, even if it usually is!
Some great discussion has already taken place on this topic at Quirksmode and DomScripting.
Thanks Ryan!
March 2nd, 2006
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