dangerouslyawesome

As you may have noticed, Ive been writing alot about Javascript recently. Mostly, because I’ve been reading alot about javascript recently. I’m working on a project that involves my first real brushes with AJAX, besides the word itself being thrown around all willy nilly. Everything is being built from scratch with ASP.Net 1.1, no anthem.net, no atlas. Just Michael Schwarz’s Ajax.Net Pro.

The whole thing really is pretty sharp. I’m not going to give a tutorial of how to work it, though I cannot recommend the documentation on michael schwarz’s page…pick up pragmatic ajax.

This commentary is more about designing ajax applications than how to build them. More than anything, the whole “stay within the page” model, and using div overlays as dialog boxes in a “modal window” fashion.

Overall, I dont like it. I like inline editing, and so far in this app, we havent had any of it. TONS of places it could be used, but the application IA didnt call for it. Everything was placed in div-overlay dialog boxes. And since the content varies, the we need more and more methods to create a custom dialog box for each modal window.

Generally speaking, if there is any kind of delay on the callback, the dialog box gets munged. If you click on the trigger to launch it more than once, the effects could be disasterous on the page. Too much mouse input is required. Its an abuse of an application window model in a web-based application, and it just doesnt work for me.

I’m looking forward greatly for the sunset meeting on this project. It was the first AJAX project design for the IA, and the first AJAX app for me and the other developer. LOTS of learning for all of us…what works, what doesnt, and what do do for the future. Our next app is going to be incredible, so long as our sunset meeting is productive.

Some good reads:

AJAX wireframing (PDF Warning)

Matthew Miller’s Blog about ‘Too Much Ajax’