Developing a new generation of Web applications using AJAX Technology (5)

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This client approach has been ingrained in the daily commercial internet for the past more than 10 years. The friendly WYSIWYG Web authoring tool visualizes our site as a collection of pages. The server-side web framework models the transformation between such pages as a state transition diagram. Classic Web applications, when page refreshes, are tightly coupled with an unavoidable lack of response, and cannot easily be invoked to an asynchronous processor solution.

But Amazon has achieved commercial success on the basis of its website. Of course, classic Web applications can't be as unusable as that? To understand why Web pages can be suitable for Amazon and not for everyone, we should consider the problem of usage patterns.
v. Long-term and ephemeral use patterns

Software usability expert Alan Cooper has important conclusions about usage patterns and defines two key ways to use it: short and long term. A short application may be used on a daily basis, but only for a period of time and usually only as a second activity. Instead, a long-term application must effectively handle the user's full attention for several hours at a time.

Many applications are in fact short-lived or long term use. A writer's word processor is a long term application, for example, it includes a number of short-lived features, such as a file manager (often embedded in a word processor, such as a file save or Open dialog box), a dictionary or spell checker (often embedded), and an e-mail program that communicates with colleagues. For a software developer, the text editor or the Integrated development environment (IDE) is what they use for a long time, as well as the debugger.

Long-term applications are often used with passion. Keep in mind that a well-formed UI should be invisible. A good metric for this use is the impact on the user UI workflow, which reminds the user of its existence. I might be happy if I simply moved files from one folder to another and encountered a 2-second wait. If I'm running a drawing program or meeting the same 2-second wait in the middle of a heavy debugging session, I might get a little uneasy.

Amazon is a short application, and ebay and Google as well as most of the very large public web-based applications are also such programs. Since the advent of the Internet, authoritative experts have predicted the fate of the traditional desktop Office suite under the impact of web-based solutions. However, 10 years have passed and it hasn't happened yet. Web-page based solutions are sufficient for short use but not enough for long-term use.

　　 VI. Forget about the web

Thankfully, modern web browsers resemble the original client-side ideal for remote document servers-a similar to the Swiss Army knife that resembles an outdated calcium carbide hunting tool. In the rush to create the most eye-catching browsing experience, interactive gadgets, scripting languages and Plug-ins will/are being closed in indecision.

Ajax can be viewed as a rehabilitation center for children who have been misunderstood in the browser war. By providing some guidance and a framework in which to operate, we can convert JavaScript into a useful model member on the Internet, which improves the usability of a Web application and does not irritate users or show browsers the need for spam in the process. To this end, there are some sophisticated, easy-to-understand tools that can be used to help us. Design patterns are a tool that is commonly used in our work and is referenced in this article many times.

The introduction of a new technology is a technological and social process. Once the technology emerges, people need to figure out what to do with it, and the first step is often to use it as if it were an old technology and more familiar. As a result, the early bikes were used as Trojans and rode along the ground, pushing people's feet. As this technology is known to a wider range of users, yet another batch of innovators will find new ways to use this technology-adding improvements such as pedals, brakes, gears and inflatable tires. With each improvement, bicycles are becoming less like horses (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10 Development of modern bicycles

The same process also applies to the development of web technologies. The technology behind Ajax can transform a Web page into something quite new. To fundamentally understand the potential of Ajax technology, we must release the concept of Web pages and, in doing so, forget many of the assumptions that we have made before. In the last few months, with the advent of Ajax, many of the techniques we used were discarded.