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AJAX is Alienating Many Web Surfers

Posted: August 6, 2006

While AJAX seems to be a hit with the ‘Web 2.0′ community, other’s absolutely detest AJAX. AJAX can add additional features, interactivity, and ‘coolness’ to a page. However, with every new feature, there are also drawbacks, and the backlash against AJAX will grow for many until some simple problems are eliminated.

In AJAX, the back button is a navigational nightmare

Have you ever done a search at Google? Have you ever realized the info Google presented you isn’t quite right and you did three or four searches? Now, how often did you want to click back and see the third search result as it had the best information? We don’t always remember every website and URL we visit, that’s why we rely on back button and forward button technology in a web browser - however, on AJAX the convenience of a back button is gone.

The ‘coolness’ of Google maps is quite amazing. You can drag, zoom, see satellite imagery, and play with the maps to your heart’s content. However, once the coolness factor wears off, you’ll want functionality, and this is where AJAX fails. You can no longer hit the back button to see the location of that other hotel you were scouting. You have to remember the name, or the search query (or good luck if you were dragging the map around and weren’t quite sure where you were) as a browser’s navigational features
don’t work with this technology.

I talked to someone at Microsoft about the navigational issues (MSN’s Live.com has similar issues), and was told this is something they’re looking into as it’s a huge user interface nightmare.

Loading Times - Some people are still on dial-up

Every once in a while I visit friends who live in the middle of nowhere. Broadband availability doesn’t exist, and satellite connections can be quite fickle. This culture still lives by the rules of dial up. One of the reasons AJAX works so well is that it pre-loads information in the background so that the necessary information is already on the page. For dial-up users, the load times are often measured in minutes. Waiting 3 minutes for a page to load, so that you realize you have to do another search (and wait
another 3 minutes) is quite a frustrating process.

Widespread use of AJAX is creating a division of internet properties. Once upon a time, if you were on dial-up, you just had to accept that videos would take a long time to download, and waiting is your choice. However, with websites, that is the interface to interact with the website, therefore, the use of AJAX alienates potential consumers from a website.

Crashing a Browser

When loading an AJAX page, most browsers essentially ‘freeze’ until the page is loaded. When each web page was a separate browser window, this might not have been such an issue. With the invention of tabbed browsing, instead of a single page being inaccessible, every website one is viewing is inaccessible.

This might not be too bad if one is on broadband, and using a powerful computer (more on that below). However, the propensity for AJAX pages to completely crash a browser means every page one is viewing is now gone. Luckily, browsers such as Avant automatically give one the option to restore all pages upon restarting so you don’t have to remember every page you had open. However, if one of those pages was a ticketing site, requires a login, etc - you might have to start your search over from scratch.

Ultra Portable & Older Computers

Because of the amount of information AJAX loads, many computer’s start to become sluggish as it’s memory becomes tapped. My travel computer is a small (2.8 lbs) Sony Vaio. It has a 1.2M processor and 1.1 gigs of memory. Once upon a time, that was enough to surf the web. There are AJAX pages that quickly utilize the majority of my memory and make any other program I have open inaccessible. I once tested leaving live.com (with about 30 blog subscriptions) open for 24 hours. After that time, a single program (IE
7), with one tab open (Live.com), was utilizing 1 gig of memory.

When one talks about efforts to bring computers to everyone, these computers aren’t state of the art machines. They are machines with at most 512 MB of RAM, and 1.2-1.8 processors (at best, many are even slower). As with alienating dial-up users, AJAX focused sites will also alienate those who don’t have powerful machines.

The Rant is Over & There are some Bright Points

While AJAX will leave some consumers behind (and if you depend on conversions & user experience for your business, you don’t want to leave anyone behind) AJAX does have many bright spots.

First, it allows for functionality not possible with regular HTML pages. The interactive nature of AJAX can be incredibly useful, and bring yet unseen features to the web.

While I picked on Google Maps above, Google Maps is great for exploring a landscape, seeing relative locations of landmarks, and getting an idea of an area’s layout. These features would not be possible without AJAX.

AJAX (or a similar technology) will be widely used - and rightly so for it’s ability to bring new interactive features to static pages. The question is, will it be deployed in a manner accessible to all?

What can be done to Improve Web Browsing

There are several things that can be done to improve the functionality of the web for those who can’t take advantage of AJAX.

First, program in a back button. This could even be loaded within the website’s frameset and not be part of the browser’s functions. A website should be able to maintain a history of searches and user behavior and then display back and forward buttons. This would bring significant improvement in a user’s experience with AJAX.

Allow for a non-AJAX page. There’s no reason while HTML pages can’t be utilized for those who prefer non-AJAX browsing. Mapquest gave us a great set of mapping options for years based upon HTML and a database. Sometimes one has to forget about the ‘WOW’ factor and just give users functional options.

Kudos for the Live team on this one. Microsoft’s Live Mail is a very good example of giving a user the option of AJAX or non-AJAX options. When one logs into a MSN Live Mail account, while the page is loading, there is a link for ‘have a slow connection, use our other interface’ which takes one to a non-AJAX, fast loading (and yes, few enabled feature)version of Live Mail.

At Last, the Rant is Over - It’s about Information Equality

The web is a place for equality. Equality not based on computer power, broadband availability, or location. Equality based upon an equal access to information.

Until AJAX functionality exists to ensure the web’s equality to all, there needs to be a check before deploying an entire website that is dependent upon AJAX. Ask your marketing team, is it ok if we alienate many web users to have these features?

Most marketing departments will frown on the fact that before you’ve even registered a conversion you’re cutting down your potential market size.

Then ask a librarian, is it ok if we only allow half of the population to check out our books? I don’t anticipate a positive response.

AJAX does have it’s place; and will have it’s place in the future.

However- first, can you support the web’s equality?

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Written by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper · Filed Under Blog

Comments

2 Responses to “AJAX is Alienating Many Web Surfers”

Rene on September 8th, 2006 5:10 pm

Personally I don’t see what is so special about AJAX. I have yet to see an AJAX website that convinces me that it is a superior standard.
Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us » bgtheory.com on February 8th, 2007 7:41 pm

[...] I don’t think I’ve ever posted a link to YouTube.com before. In fact, I’m not a huge web 2.0 person. I still think the concepts are better than the implementation (You can read my thoughts on AJAX here). [...]