Ajax Bells and Whistles

I was recently approached by a client to provide a web site with ’all the bells and whistles’ ’moving stuff’ etc. So I set about producing Ajaxified content but I’ve got this impending sense of doom!

I can get most things to work in most browsers but when you add up all the issues involved with doing something like this, to me it doesn’t make sense.

’Dynamic content’ is difficult to print - good printing a requirement in this case.
It is inconsistent across browsers.
The content isn’t indexed properly by search engines - if at all.
Inaccessible.

I get this feeling we’ve come so far with the web but this stuff is eye candy for eye candy’s sake. It’s like condensing ’War and Peace’ down to one page and then needing a huge magnifying glass to see the text.

Well... that’s made me feel better. Feel free to ignore this ’end-of-a-long-day’ drivel but I would be interested in your opinion.

Quotes in brown.

’Dynamic content’ is difficult to print - good printing a requirement in this case.
Can easily be done with proper CSS.

It is inconsistent across browsers.
Only if you’re doing it from scratch. Try out some JS frameworks that already account for the differences, and you’ll barely notice.

The content isn’t indexed properly by search engines - if at all.
That’s the developer’s fault, not the method.

Inaccessible.
Again, a problem with the developer. I’ve made many a site in perfectly 508 accessible standards (I work for the government, so I have to), all in AJAX-driven content.

Well... that’s made me feel better. Feel free to ignore this ’end-of-a-long-day’ drivel but I would be interested in your opinion.
It is your opinion. Most people new to dynamic JS-driven content hate it too.

Take some time with it, learn how to do it right, and you won’t ever go back. I promise.

AJAX (and Javascript in general) - I love it when it works, and when it gives me grief I despise it! Hmm... kind of reminds me of when my kids were teenagers

That said (from a developer’s point of view), as a user, if a page starts bouncing around and making noises at me, I can’t hit the "back" button fast enough. Even if it’s something specific that I was searching for, I’ll go back to Google and find another page with a close enough alternative. But that goes for Flash as well as Javascript. I must admit that occasionally I see Flash or Javascript actions that don’t immediately offend. Hmm... maybe I should add the caveat that I don’t have a television for much the same reason

I agree with both and all of the above but I can’t help thinking that this whole ’dynamic’ content thing (specifically pulling the content of one page into another) feels like the bad old days of frames and iframes? - just when we have a fantastic tool like MODx that makes adding content and building attractive and compliant navigation so easy.

I would love to see some examples of sites where the user experience is enhanced, search engine visibility is improved and where forward compatibility is not a huge issue. And if someone can show me an example of ’one-click-printing’ of dynamic content that would be even better! (But that’s just me being selfish!).

I have to say that Flash is looking rather attractive at the moment - especially with the ability to pulll in html content.

I’ve been using the JQuery framework and I think I’ve picked the basics up pretty quickly but wow - that is a lot of code just to pull in some content or create a slide down panel of content.

I would be interested to hear opinions of different frameworks and of the web designer / developer experience.

Many thanks for your opinions so far.