Ajax Misconceptions

Ajax is great. Ajax is brilliant. I'm not talking about the kitchen cleaner, I'm talking about the future of the web. Asynchronous Javascript And Xml - AJAX.

But like most new technologies, there are already misconceptions about what ajax is and isn't. Ajax is really just a business buzz-word we've been given to make it easier for the managers to talk about it. It's nicer than talking about that XmlHttpRequest javascript object. See, not as much bang as Ajax.

So allow me to try and disspell some myths about what Ajax is and isn't. Ajax is just allowing javascript to make calls to the serever without posting the entire page back. That's all. But this opens up a huge array of possibilities for web applications. We can now retreieve data from the server based on a user action without the ugly page refresh.

This javascript server request is not much good on it's own. OK, so I've got some data from the server. Now what? What am I going to do with that data? I need to show it to the user, which is why I use DHTML to manipulate the DOM and show the results to the user. And this is where it all gets blurry. Ajax is never just ajax on it's own. Ajax is normally coupled with something like DHTML to get a real world benfit out of it. Ignorant buzz-word throwers don't see the boundary of Ajax as being just the request mechanism the get the data. They see the DHTML as the Ajax as well.

Now, I've cast a disburtion at the ignorant buzz-word throwers. But this is actually an industry wide issue. I didn't realise until I was helping a friend look for a job. He typed in "Ajax" into the keywords field on a popular IT job website, and you wouldn't believe the number of jobs being advertised as "Wanted: Ajax Guru" when the entire job is just design and eye candy. There's no ajax there! There's no data, there's no Ajax!

So please, buzz-word throwers, get it right. Ajax is for data, DHTML is for eye candy.