Does anyone (besides programmers) really like Ajax-based websites?
Asked by
Kraigmo (
9223
)
June 1st, 2010
I’m mostly talking about email providers such as: Lycos, Excite, AOL, Yahoo.
They’ve all switched to ajax-based webmail. Some of them, like Excite, give you no option to ever have HTML again in their site.
But here’s the problem I’ve noticed: Ajax based sites are slow and clunky. It’s impossible to smooth-scroll, and you cannot easily go back and forth with things the way HTML lets you with the browser.
The only thing about Ajax-based websites is the prettier, more gooey feel to them, with what seems to programmers to be more options… but only at first till you try to use them as a user. Then the clunkiness kicks in.
So… who besides progammers likes that crap… and why? And if you do like it… how do you deal with the lack of ability to smooth-scroll down and up?
And my internet connection is fast as can be (ISDN) so this isn’t a connection problem. I realize everyone knows that slow connections can make Ajax-stuff work way slower.
And if you are a programmer… why are you guys addicted to pretty-but-clunky stuff like Ajax?
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I don’t think non-programmers will know the difference, I think you should provide some specific sites. Gmail, for example, has links at the bottom “basic HTML” gives you the non-Ajax version.
A couple of things I do like about Ajax sites:
Drag & dropping email into folders in Yahoo mail
Keyboard shortcuts “F = forward, N = New email message”
Your question did make me curious, so I reverted to the old basic HTML Gmail. I think the Ajax version initially loads slower, but then everything speeds up because it’s loading lots of stuff in the background.
Well there are right and wrong ways to use Ajax. I’ve visited a lot of sites that use it but have to wait on the response in order to continue—this really slows the experience down. On the other hand, sites like Facebook use it and still provide the ability to move forwards and backwards in the browser (for the most part) while doing the heavy lifting in the background.
And as @jaytkay mentioned, the Ajax version of Gmail seems to work perfectly fine on my end—the experience surpasses the plain HTML version IMO. This leads me to wonder if it’s a problem with your setup. Which OS and browser are you using? IE’s javascript engine is notoriously clunky and can lead to sub-par Ajax performance. I use Firefox and it works great—though I believe the fastest out there is probably Chrome.
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