How Not to Use “AJAX”
Once a technology reaches buzzword-compliance, it starts to pop up in the least appropriate of circumstances. The current manifestation of this is the “improvement” of favourites management on javablogs.
Let’s review favourites as they were. You have the ability to add a chosen blog to your “favourites” list. You can also choose to ignore a blog, so that entries from that blog are hidden. To do this previously, you simply clicked on a “+” or “x” icon next to the header of any entry from the blog:
Simple, and effective. Now, swept up in the hype of AJAX, the mechanism for managing favourites has been updated. The same “+” and “x” icons still appear, but they no longer take direct effect. Instead, they pop up a dialog:
Wow, a nice piece of eye candy that serves no purpose whatsoever. The dialog gives exactly the same options as were available before. The text description of the actions could more appropriately be added as tooltips for the icons. To add insult to injury, you can’t even click on the text, but only the icons on the left. I can see the tagline now:
“Favourites management: Now with extra click!” 
Strictly speaking, the dialog itself is not AJAX at all, just plain old Javascript/DHTML. The adding of favourites, though, does happen without a full refresh, which is an improvement.
Now, javablogs is not alone in this gratuitous use of new technology, it just happened to be right in my face today. Please people, remember: the goodness of AJAX (and more use of Javascript/DHTML) is in improving usability. Think before you code, and keep your AJAX tasteful.
January 11th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
To be fair, we haven’t finished yet.
The menu was a first-try at solving the problem that the icons don’t really explain what they’re doing very well: they look like they should be “digg/bury this entry” when they’re really “dig/bury this whole blog”. At least the DHTML menu explains what’s going on a little better.
January 11th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Hey Charles,
OK, I look forward to the further improvements ;).
Regarding explaining the icons: the problem with doing it this way is that you only need to learn once, but with the popup you pay every time. That is why I suggested using tooltips: you can hover over and wait a bit longer if you are unsure. Maybe adding a word next to the icon and/or a legend in the side column is an option.
In any case, considering that you guys are both providing a free service and spending the effort to improve it, I shouldn’t whinge too much :).