Ajax are you using it?

[Eric Pascarello]

Well I thought I would start some topics. I am about to start a full time job implementing Ajax into the user interface to improve the user's experience. I also have done some freelance work for companies giving them the basic tools to perform Ajax tasks to eliminate post backs. I was wondering if anyone has implemented Ajax into their applications yet.

Eric

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

I wrote a sort of simple "virtual terminal" that lets the user talk to a remote command-line program from their browser. It's used here for a demo on the Jess web site:

http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov/jessdemo/

I used to have an applet to do the same thing. More bandwidth, took much longer to start, didn't work for everyone. This is much nicer.

[Henry Wong]

One of my colleagues here wrote a "simulation" of another program using Ajax. Had to modify it to integrate with it. And to add some features to it. However, I never really learned enough to understand what I was doing though.

Henry

[Kristin Stromberg]

Yes! My co-workers and I are now Ajax addicts. For example, I'm currently working on an app where the user has to enter a bunch of different records one at a time in a pop-up window. Saving the new record updates the list of records in the main window instantly, without having to refresh the whole screen. I don't think the user even realizes what is going on (and that's a good thing!).

One of my co-workers is using it to save changes to multiple records from a single page. All of us are re-thinking our current apps to see where we can apply Ajax to improve the user experience. One thing I have planned is a search feature that displays the number of records found as the user selects various search options. Hopefully, this will help avoid all those "0 records found" searches!

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Not currently using Ajax. After reading your (Eric/Dave/Darren) book, I got a better feel for what it can do. We did recently get off NS 4.7 though

[Eric Pascarello]

Originally posted by Kristin Stromberg:
One thing I have planned is a search feature that displays the number of records found as the user selects various search options. Hopefully, this will help avoid all those "0 records found" searches!

That is a really cool idea, that never popped into my head!

Eric

[sunitha reghu]

wow!! I cant wait. In my next project I will use ajax.

Originally posted by Kristin Stromberg:
Yes! My co-workers and I are now Ajax addicts. For example, I'm currently working on an app where the user has to enter a bunch of different records one at a time in a pop-up window. Saving the new record updates the list of records in the main window instantly, without having to refresh the whole screen. I don't think the user even realizes what is going on (and that's a good thing!).

One of my co-workers is using it to save changes to multiple records from a single page. All of us are re-thinking our current apps to see where we can apply Ajax to improve the user experience. One thing I have planned is a search feature that displays the number of records found as the user selects various search options. Hopefully, this will help avoid all those "0 records found" searches!

[Eric Pascarello]

Originally posted by Jeanne Boyarsky:
Not currently using Ajax. After reading your (Eric/Dave/Darren) book, I got a better feel for what it can do. We did recently get off NS 4.7 though

For anything that has to support NN4.X, I would leave that company! We are talking about a browser that is how old? I do not think many of those computers are still running! LOL

Eric

[Lane Liles]

We've created prototypes and now have plans to implement a few AJAX features. We're a relatively small shop and don't have the resources to implement all the features we would like, but the benefits gained from two areas in particular really sold us on how AJAX can improve the user interface and experience.

We prompt for a mutli-part item code using a series of <select>'s, one for each part. The catch is that the value of each part of the code is dependant on the previous parts (i.e. part #4 of the code is dependant on the value of parts #1, #2, & #3), and each part can sometimes have up to 1000 possible values. This means that once a choice was made for part #1, a round trip was required to refresh the possible values in the remaining <select>'s, so choosing a 7 part code requires 6 refreshes. Using AJAX though, we can now update those <select>'s almost instantly (with no page refresh), which was a big, big hit with our customers.

The other area we saw a big benefit was in searching using a Google Suggest type feature where we do an auto-complete or suggestion based on the partial string entered in a textbox. Basically it helps the user in knowing what they're going to get before they even hit the "real" search button.

While we would love to go all the way and create an application that never requires a full page refresh (we can dream can't we?), we're focusing on what gives us the biggest bang for our buck.

[Eric Pascarello]

Originally posted by Lane Liles:
While we would love to go all the way and create an application that never requires a full page refresh (we can dream can't we?), we're focusing on what gives us the biggest bang for our buck.

To me that is what Ajax is about. It is not the full blown application, but the little things we can do that change the user's experience.

Eric

[Kevin Cornwell]

I made a inventory tracking web app that uses AJAX. It's fast and works better than it's VB6 predecessor. And simpler too.

[Stephen Cote]

I created a framework for web applications (started on it in 2002; a lot of AJAX principles in it), and also have created a behavior monitor product that uses AJAX to send data.
[ November 11, 2005: Message edited by: Stephen Cote ]