Pathfinder Development » Which Ajax-based Apps Do You Actually Use?

Which Ajax-based Apps Do You Actually Use?

Dietrich Kappe, Thursday, February 1, 2007 @ 6:00 am

I've looked at a lot of Ajax-based apps in the last year and a half and have kicked the tires pretty seriously on over two hundred. I've recently taken stock of how many I actually used more than that first time. In the end, I don't use all that many of them. Why not?

All those nifty proof of concepts that do a photoshop clone on the web are just too impractical, too slow.
Not everyone feels comfortable using Google Spreadsheet. Getting out of the habit of using dekstop apps is not so trivial. There is a real angst when abandoning the desktop/email attachment paradigm.
I don't use social bookmarking sites for the Ajax buzz. In fact, the social bookmarking sites I use most have the least amount of Ajax. It seems to keep the riff raff out and keep the signal to noise ratio high.
Who really needs an Ajax OS? Maybe those hipsters in China that flit from cyber cafe to cyber cafe with their neon colored thumb drives. I already have a few too many desktops in my own computing environment without taking Ajax strays off the net.
Collaboration on the web still sucks. In fact, computer mediated collaboration pretty much sucks everywhere. Wiki's usually need major first aid from a librarian after about 3 months of vigorous collaboration, and Wiki's are really the best metaphor for collaboration at the moment.
After over a decade of getting used to the web and it's limited user interface, now I have to learn all sorts of new widgets and behaviors. The lack of standards in this domain can make Ajax apps somewhat challending to learn.

Most of the Ajax apps I use are bookmarklets and other subversive things I've put together to improve my experience on other sites. I also use Google Maps, but that could just as well be done in Flash (and in fact is, when you look at the Flash version of Yahoo maps). And of course there are a few pay applications that I use that are incorporating Ajax in their interfaces.

I'm curious to learn what sort of Ajax apps everyone out there is using on a daily or weekly basis. Drop me a line (ajax@pathf.com).

Technorati : ajax, editorial

Topics: Editorial

agile ajax

Comments: 6 so far

I find what’s slowing my adoption of ajax apps is the lack of integration between them. Sometimes it feels like when you’re working on two different computers at the same time and you keep forgetting every 5 minutes that you can’t open a document you just created on one in the other.

Comment by Daniel, Thursday, February 1, 2007 @ 2:07 pm
Daily: GMail, Google Personalized Home Page, my current project (in development)
Several times per week: OWA
Occasionally: Meebo
Soon: SourceCode “BlackPearl” (Workflow/BPM product) - the designer is done up in AJAX.

AJAX is good for web applications. I don’t see a whole lot of benefit for web pages/sites. Portals like Google Pers. Home, are contenders.

Comment by Oskar Austegard, Friday, February 2, 2007 @ 9:40 am
Google Reader led me here.
OWA’s open next to it.

Comment by Rob, Friday, February 2, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
I think that the best AJAX sites are the sites that aren’t comprised of AJAX, they just use it to enhance the experience.

One of my favorite uses of AJAX is when you are registering and it informs you after you leave the user name fields that it’s already taken. That way I don’t have to submit the page, find out that it’s taken and reenter my password.

Other good use of AJAX: voting systems such as Digg. AJAX is great when used subtly.

Worst use of AJAX - Yahoo! TV Listings. What the hell were they thinking.

Comment by Ryan Smith, Friday, February 2, 2007 @ 2:08 pm
Basecamp is a great AJAX-y collaboration tool, IMHO.

Comment by Bob O'Malley, Saturday, February 3, 2007 @ 1:42 am
I agree — Ajax for its own sake isn’t useful (like the OS). It helps to streamline an existing scenario. Here are some sites that use it well, in my opinion:

instantdomainsearch — avoid retyping or back and forth
google maps — draggable maps, the original
gmail — fast browsing of email
instacalc.com — real-time calculations as you type
digg/reddit — rate a story without reload (compare to slashdot)

Comment by Kalid, Tuesday, May 8, 2007 @ 4:50 am