Do you make use of AJAX?

I was just wondering who makes use of AJAX here... when I first learnt about AJAX I began to over-do it and use it in places that it really wasn't required!

My #1 tip about AJAX from my own experience and others advise is: If you don't need to use AJAX (ie it is going to speed anything up or make information access easier), then don't!

Another tip is to remember with the likes of AJAX it is important to provide an alternative if Javascript isn't enabled on the users browser... even just a message to explain to the user!

My latest use of AJAX is for reading into older news entries at the company site, here: http://www.servetechltd.co.uk/site/news.html

Click the "Read older news entries" link at the bottom to see what I mean I'm just sorting out the none-javascript alternative now...

I have also began learning that it's important to keep the user informed. The well known similar AJAX loading icons are great when animated, letting the user know that something is happening behind the scenes. Recently I've began to implement a timeout which after a certain time period, if the request isn't complete, informs the user that it seems to be taking longer than usual (though this could just be their internet connection being slower). So yeah, informing the user is another big point of AJAX where requests for more information may not process as normal with the traditional "page loading" and status indicator in their browser.

Where do you use AJAX? Do you like AJAX implementations as an end-user to speed up requests and make things easier? Do you even have a clue about AJAX?! Share with us! :biggrin:

I've never used AJAX, but I think that it's an awesome tool. I love the fact that you can update a page without actually leaving that page. The best use I've seen of it so far is in VB in the quick reply. Up until now, the only thing that I have used is HTML, XHTML, and PHP.....But I would love to learn more about AJAX and javascript...

Well if you know PHP, Javascript will be quite easy to learn Once you've learnt Javascript, you can use that to create AJAX applications/websites fetching data or information from a PHP file.

I have started using AJAX on new sites that I start and operate. It makes the site much better in my opinion.

I'd like to learn AJAX but still newbie in php, so its a long way to go for me.
Perhaps there is someone out there who can be my guru.

You don't need any knowledge in PHP to make use of AJAX. Though PHP can be used for backend processing, you don't need any specific knowledge - just to be able to print things to a page.

The actual work going on in AJAX is the Javascript processing it..

I use AJAX at a lot of sites, mostly for form posts and displaying the retrieved response. In order to ease the coding I use mootools javascript framework, which is very handy when the time comes for the fancy designing. I belive that for a real web2.0 like design a good javascript library is MUST.:biggrin: