Nearly a year ago, there was a bit of debate on this blog about the difficulties finding good on-line tutorials about AJAX. Things have certainly not changed. Still today a search on a famous search engine produces little of value. It seem that a lot of the AJAX furore was just a version of web-based-Vapourware. Who would have thought it.
Even today, the idea that putting AJAX onto a site is a “GOODTHING®” holds sway on lots of web designer magazines and websites. Part of me thinks this is total nonsense, and I have yet to see a compelling example of how AJAX can really benefit websites. I mean, does it actually add value, or is it like rounded corners – just something which looks cool? All the demos I can find fall into two broad categories. One type have some implementation of Google maps with cool little pointers telling you things like the most likely place to get mugged. Nice but of certainly limited value. The other type (this blog included) make use of AJAX to do “cool” things like show images in floating boxes (try it here!), again light boxes are undeniably cool but it could be questioned how much value they really add.
Despite this, I am still trying to learn it. There is the off chance that I can come across something which will change my mind and make me think it is all worthwhile. Even though I am far from a JavaScript newbie (I even have the certificate to prove it!), finding tutorials is not an easy thing. Multiple web searches find either examples which are so trivial it is embarrassing that someone has posted them, or examples which seem to show the creator does not really have a good idea what AJAX can be used for but wants to make a tutorial about it! (These tend to involve meaningless sorting of lists and the like).
Does anyone know of a good AJAX tutorial?
Sadly true. The little maps are good, the lightboxes are good, rounded corners are good… But they are everywhere, whether they are any use on a given site or not.
And tutorials are uniformly uselss or just consist of simple instructions of the “paste this code” kind – which is where the little maps and rounded corners and lightboxes come from. As the code exists for these, it seems pointless learning any more Ajax, really.
There must be something AJAX is good for! 🙂 (it does these little comment things as well..)
I dunno, the new reinvigorate service is ajaxed up the eyeballs (oooh! sounds sore!) and is rather neat.
Unfortunately it’s under private beta at the moment, but it is pretty cool.
For ajax tutorials, I pretty much just keep up to date with what’s happening in the worlds of RoR, Django and Symfony.
Thanks – Django is good, never really got into RoR very well. Will check out Symfony.
As an aside, I did come across this page – http://tutorialblog.org/100-ajax-tutorials-and-resources/ – but I have not had any chance to check the tutorials or see how good they are.
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