"Ajax" library recommendations, thoughts, experien

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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

OK guys... if you want to continue this bickering I suggest you do it via PM. Thank you.
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infolock
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Post by infolock »

sorry.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

infolock wrote:sorry.
Fair-do's... apology accepted :)
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John Cartwright
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Post by John Cartwright »

Agreed.
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

If only it was a perfect world...:)

Ajax is relatively a recent "brainstorm" - you can't expect the first few implementations to be perfect. Harry Fuecks has written at length on Ajax issues (http://ajaxblog.com/archives/author/harry-fuecks/ among other sources).

You think ANY library implementing AJAX is perfect...;)

I thnk AJAX is one of those things you should have a bit of background understanding in before jumping onto any Library bandwagon. Getting tied up completely in any single one may be costly in the long run. In a perfect world you'd track all of the AJAX libraries until one hits a stage of overhauling their code to address the already noted problems and/or concerns...
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infolock
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Post by infolock »

the only real problem faced with ajax is bandwidth. Say you have a site that uses type-ahead-suggest. Each keystroke is sending a request to the server, which means bandwidth usage every time. You could simplify this by adding a timer to the amount of keys (say if no keys in 2 seconds, execute) which helps with fast typists, but ur still sending a lot more requests to the server.

Now, turn this to a large field of viewers, say you ahve hunderds of thousnads, even millions of users. In order to make this work, you'd have to have multiple backbones, all truncated over your servers to handle the load. Google can do it since they have the cash. My company cannot because we have enough for our budget. But that is only with the type-ahead-suggest feature.

Other features such as loading pages without refreshing using the XMLHTTPRequest and other XML objects work fine and do nothing but help.

So yeah, ajax has it's ups and downs (these are just 2 really small and quick examples). But every language and coding scheme does as well. Ajax has taken off because it's the newest thing granted, but until DOM is fully mastered to work at an application level as desktop apps do, Ajax will be the leader for another 2 -3 years as Remote Scripting was. But we'll see.
Roja
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Post by Roja »

infolock wrote:the only real problem faced with ajax is bandwidth. Say you have a site that uses type-ahead-suggest. Each keystroke is sending a request to the server, which means bandwidth usage every time. You could simplify this by adding a timer to the amount of keys (say if no keys in 2 seconds, execute) which helps with fast typists, but ur still sending a lot more requests to the server.
I think the last comment is really key. Its not so much bandwidth - size - as it is volume. As Harry Fuecks points out, volume relates to latency, and it can definitely be a killer.

However, your comments make a very solid point - AJAX done sloppy will mean an ENOURMOUS increase in both traffic AND latency problems (which results in load problems).

They need to be tight, selective, and not send the whole database for a single character of text improvement. :)

I think that most sites could add a dash of AJAX without too much trouble, but now I think we are on the same page - Robust AJAX must be done optimally, or you will drown in the stream. :)
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m3mn0n
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Post by m3mn0n »

Hasn't this sort of thing been around for a long time, but just not called "AJAX"?

Anyway, I started learning more about this a little while ago and Sajax as been absolutely amazing. I was really inspired by some of the examples I saw and so I made my own little mock apps (without Sajax) and also used Sajax.

Both have been fun methods to work with and it's opened up a lot of neat possibilties within my existing apps and also for future ideas. :)
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Burrito
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Post by Burrito »

Sami wrote:Hasn't this sort of thing been around for a long time, but just not called "AJAX"?
since IE 5.0...just called XMLHttp...yes it's good stuff indeed.
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