Comments on: Netflix Flexing AJAX Muscle

By: Chris Jackson

Chris Jackson — Thu, 26 May 2005 17:41:53 +0000

Another good example of ajax can be found at http://www.professionalfaith.com/

Bottom of the page and click on “PageHit”. And their “RSS Search” is way cool.

By: jon

jon — Thu, 26 May 2005 12:51:18 +0000

they’re using it for drag’n'drop re-ordering of your queue, as well.

Not in the main queue screen, unfortunatley. But after you add a new movie, there’s a list in the top right of the page that has you’re top 10 and bottom 2 or three movies on it.

It’s drag’n'drop to re-order those items. It’s way cool.

By: Rob Kischuk

Rob Kischuk — Tue, 24 May 2005 15:09:27 +0000

Fair enough in criticising badly implemented AJAX, but the same criticism can just as easily be applied to ANY technology. I’ve seen plenty of shoddy custom MVC and ORM in software that performs like a dog. I’ve never seem anyone fired over it, even when the cost of maintenance probably exceeded the efficiences gained in the first place. Ajax is just another piece of this ever-growing puzzle of web app development.

By: Ben C

Ben C — Tue, 24 May 2005 13:09:48 +0000

I should have phrased the scalability concern better. If YOUR implementation of the Ajax technologies on your website can’t scale, then your users will care. I’m well aware of what Google has done, good for them. They also have some of the smartest engineers around too. If you’re putting Ajax into your site (and I’m not talking about some crappy blog/personal site either) and you do it wrong, you’ll be lucky if your architects and senior developers just say they told you so. I’d personally kick your ass and get you fired.

By: Curt Hibbs

Curt Hibbs — Tue, 24 May 2005 12:00:37 +0000

Ajax is “baked into” the Ruby on Rails web framework: http://www.rubyonrails.com/

By: kelzer

kelzer — Tue, 24 May 2005 10:48:33 +0000

Hey Ben,

You’re right. There’s no evidence yet that AJAX can scale. I mean, it’s not like Google is using it or anything.

By: Ben C

Ben C — Tue, 24 May 2005 08:48:26 +0000

Dude, who pissed in your wheaties? Sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder regarding an architect who didn’t like Ajax. Well programming is an art form to some degree. And while I love what Ajax does, until it’s more proven, I would imagine that the adoption rate is going to be slow. What Ajax needs is something like a web framework to be “baked into” it. ANd yes, you’re right end users don’t CARE about hacks, that’s what your architect and senior developers care about. If Ajax can’t scale, then you can sure bet your end users WILL CARE about how slow and crappy your Ajax’d website is.

By: Andy Ruff

Andy Ruff — Mon, 23 May 2005 18:26:39 +0000

AJAX is a development methodoly coupled around technologies, not a specific technology that Microsoft has the ability to “bake” into IE7. In fact, XMLHTTPRequest, the single most important JavaScript method that much of the AJAX design revolves around, was actually invented by Microsoft and “baked” into IE years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest).