Gadgetopia

Christian Decker wrote up a nice tutorial on doing a full framework with AJAX. This is the “all-in” approach to AJAX: the site is loaded entirely through javascript and javascript handles nearly all of the client-server communication.

This looks like an attractive way to write a web app. You essentially get to go back to the event-driven, MVC-type model of a desktop app. The client maintains nearly all of the state information and the client and server code can be completely separate.

While this is probably appropriate for certain contained situations (complex app on an intranet), I don’t think I would take this approach with a public web site. My feeling on javascript is that it makes excellent seasoning, but poor meat. I make it a goal that any page will still work if javascript and CSS are both unavailable. This typically means that for, say, an AJAX-ified form, I’ll send the markup down as a plain old form, and have the javascript manipulate the DOM to replace the form on the fly. If the javascript doesn’t run, you still get your form. This means a little extra work up front, but at least I know that the site will work on about anything.