Great article from Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog on AJAX - some great stuff you can accomplish but he points out 7 important things to keep in mind as you start up an Ajax project.
I've excerpted a bit here, but go read the whole thing on his blog.
What Every Software Project Needs to Know About Ajax
The Browser Was Never Meant For Ajax. About a week into your first Ajax serious application you'll discover that Ajax pushes the browser nearly beyond its limits and there are definite lower engineering tolerances to get used to.
You Won't Need As Many Web Services As You Think. I used to think that going the Ajax route required the development of a bunch of new Web services in order to feed the application data and provide a backing store. In reality, I'm finding a great many projects are quite happy to scrape HTML and/or use plain old HTTP POSTs to existing service endpoints that have no formal Web service structure.
Ajax Is More Involved Than Traditional Web Design and Development. The loss of HTML user interface conventions, the almost limitless potential for hidden or latent functionality, the programmatic creation of page elements instead of declarative, and other intrinsic aspects of the Ajax approach throw out much of what we know about Web design and development. Web designers must much more deeply understand the capabilities of the DOM, Javascript, CSS, and how the browser renders graphics, layouts, and elements. .... The bottom line: Ajax development, at least for now, usually takes quite a bit longer than traditional Web development and requires a higher level of skill.
Ajax Tooling and Components Are Still Emerging and There Is No Clear Leader Today. Though Dojo is getting one heck of a running start, the race is very far from over. .... In the meantime, be sure to check out script.aculo.us, Prototype, Google Web Toolkit, Yahoo! UI Library, JackBe, Zapatec, Bindows, Nexaweb, General Interface, Backbase, ActiveWidgets, and last but not least Microsoft Atlas.
Good Ajax Programmers are Hard to Find. Zimbra's Scott Dietzen has lamented recently about the real difficulty in finding good Ajax talent. See point #3, but building sophisticated Ajax applications requires more computer science skills much more than it does Web design skills.
One Must Actively Address Ajax's Constraints of the Browser Model. Though the final result can be very rewarding, Ajax is not a perfect Web development approach and it has a few genuine weaknesses. One is that it tends to break the model of the Web including preventing users from bookmarking content, breaking the use of the Back button, and more.
Ajax Is Only One Element of a Successful RIA Strategy. As I've written before, the addition of RIA platforms such as Flex, OpenLaszlo, and WPF/E to a RIA strategy is virtually required to properly exploit the range of capabilities you'll want robust online applications to have. This is particularly true around rich media support such as audio and video -- which Ajax is virtually incapable of -- but even such mundane things as good printing support.
Really - go read the whole thing here.
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