John Cox

AJAX and Your CMS

CMS Watch has an interesting article explaining the benefits to risks associated with using AJAX in a CMS application.

For the Web CMS world, Ajax offers the possibility for a better user experience for content authors as well as site visitors. But what of its limitations? While Ajax delivers many benefits, it also creates a few challenges.

It's a well balanced article explaining the downside to AJAX as well as the upsides. I have always thought that the performance gains from AJAX were much better than the sheer 'look at what I can do' integration into a web application. When I can zap 60% - 80% of normal load of an application by adding some well placed AJAX, then I have to be interested in the technology.

My complaint with AJAX is the side effects of use (back / bookmarking / refresh), which is a bit of a pain to work around from my perspective. My complaint with the article is giving some less than desirable solutions with the downsides.

A number of vendors deal with this by removing the traditional web buttons from the Ajax user interface.

I think this adds a little more confusion and anxiety with the user interface than the downside of refresh / back / forward. Just some thoughts though. Worth the read.