Ruining the User Experience with AJAX | Hacker News Reader

Ruining the User Experience with AJAX

alistapart.com

11 pointsElfan7 comments

In the beginning, there was HTML, and lo, there was much rejoicing among the scientists. Content was king. HTML was to provide guidelines for presentation, without dictating exact formatting. Lynx and Mosaic users existed in harmony.

Then came the .com rush, and with them, their horde of designers. Designers used tables to wring miracles from HTML, all above the protests of the purists -- "HTML is not a page description language!", "What about the Lynx users??" etc.

But what the purists missed was that the landscape had changed. HTML was no longer just about content: de facto, it had become about the presentation as well. Eventually CSS caught up and specs mirrored reality.

Ironically, it's the designers, like the author, who are now missing the context change. It's their turn to be the dinosaurs. Web 2.0 is not just about more presentation options; spice and sugar on a page-oriented website. AJAX is about building applications that use the browser as the environment. Protesting that cell phone users won't be able to use the app is missing the point. Do people complain that Writely doesn't work on a cellphone?

(Well, maybe they do. Stuff 'em! :)

Sure, that may be what AJAX and Web 2.0 are about. But isn't the point of a web site to provide some service? In the case of Lala, the service is to facilitate CD trading (or something along those lines). To best provide that service, do they really need Web 2.0 and AJAX? If they want to accomodate users of mobile devices (and wouldn't they? every visitor is a potential customer), then they should provide a working interface for those users.

On the other hand, if they think AJAX is the best way to provide their service, that's up to them... it's their web site. I think the author really means that they should be designing for a wider audience if they want to appease as many visitors as possible. Whether that demographic is important enough to bother with is another question.

What is the benefit of using the "web browser as the environment" mentality in this case? Future extensibility? Scalability? Rapid development? Or just that they couldn't think of a better way to do it?

On the sites that use AJAX correctly and effectively, I must admit that the UI is a marked improvement over past technologies. In many cases, though, it can be overkill: a waste of bandwidth and programmer time (i.e. it would be unnecessary for the Google home page to use AJAX to display search results). As an occasional Lynx user, I really appreciate when a site keeps alternate browsers in mind.

That said, I agree with jw that catering to users of ancient, insecure browsers is probably a waste of time and a barrier to progress. I disagree with a strict cost-benefit approach, however. As an analogy, Microsoft has been benefiting from this phenomenon for years due to hardware companies who only write Windows drivers, while NVidia is a good example of a hardware company which provides open source drivers and receives loyalty and sales opportunities because of it. Additionally, supporting cell phone users and the visually impaired is certainly a good idea, even if only a small percentage of visitors fall into these categories.

Of course, as numerous others mentioned, it's important to be aware of your target audience, but don't be surprised if your actual audience does not necessarily match the one you have in mind.

While I agree AJAX apps should gracefully degrade when Javascript is disabled, I personally like the (Javascript-enabled) UI at Lala.com. I'm not sure I agree every service must be accessible everywhere.

It depends on the app. I'd really like to be able to check my Gmail and calendar on my cell phone. But I won't mind if I can't load Youtube or Flickr.

Know your target audience.

I agree that you should know your target audience, but I think it's also a cost-benefit issue. I'm all for making your page accessible to as many people as possible, but in many cases it's not practical to cater to the 3 hits per month that for some reason still use Netscape 4.x.

I disagree with the article that you might need to "dig out some old favorites like @import" for older browsers. As discussed in "To Hell With Bad Browsers" ( http://www.alistapart.com/articles/tohell ), you shouldn't have to deal with people who refuse to use a modern browser. (Hmm that was 6 years ago now... am I old?)

I agree with the article that it's illogical to load an entire page with AJAX and not have a non-javascript option, but I think the whole 3-level scheme is overkill in some cases. I think it comes back to knowing your audience, and designing your site so that they will be able to use it how they want.

Reddit renders in lynx. The reply boxes aren't hidden in the comments list, and I can't log in. Otherwise the site is easily usable.

I can load lala.com, and do get a nice description of the page (which is better than some sites!). I can access the search field, but can't change the categories. I can't press the search button.

I'd be interested to know the reason why, for example, they chose to set up their categories like that, rather than using some sort of radio button form. And if they're going to use AJAX, why not make the "tabs" look like actual tabs? What benefits are gained by having a search button that can't be pressed without javascript?

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