NYCPHP Meetup

[Dell Sala]

I understand your concerns here, but I don't think Stephen has given  
us enough information here to make a judgement one way or another. It  
really depends on the usability requirements for each specific case.  
I've been amazed how avoiding page reloads can improve user  
experience, and even make the developers life easier, especially when  
designing web apps with complex user interaction and state requirements.

That being said, if it is just a case of a sub-nav for displaying  
nested, non-interactive content, AJAX is probably overkill.

***

The issue of "accurate" URLs, and possible solutions are documented  
well on ajaxpaterns.org:

http://ajaxpatterns.org/Unique_URLs

-- Dell


On Dec 14, 2006, at 12:11 PM, Chris Shiflett wrote:

> Stephen Musgrave wrote:
>> I have a designer who would like to have links on the subnav to
>> NOT refresh the page.
>
> Ugh. Why not? Navigation links go to different pages (with presumably
> different content), therefore the URL should change. I'm sure you can
> manage to use Ajax and other client-side technologies to mimic  
> going to
> a different page (changing the URL and such), but this is a perfect
> example of misusing Ajax.
>
> Just so it doesn't sound like I'm anti-Ajax, there are situations  
> where
> it can be useful. One example is a comment form with a preview. To
> display the preview, you could use Ajax to exchange the minimum amount
> of information with the server as necessary (to process the comment
> using whatever filtering/formatting is already in place on the server)
> and display the preview on the current page. The URL would not change,
> but from a user's perspective, the page hasn't changed either, so  
> it's OK.
>
> That's my opinion. :-)
>
> Chris
>
> -- 
> Chris Shiflett
> http://shiflett.org/