I want my application to be as accessible as possible.
You can do things like rendering your modals and forms as a page that can operate standalone.
- The AJAX version pulls the template into a modal/container, the standalone version checks if it's an AJAX request and renders the page including the header/footer (this can occur from the same URL if planned well)
- The AJAX version intercepts the submit and does AJAX submission then provides an inline thank you, the non-AJAX opens a thank you page. Once again you can likely use the same pages for each of these functions if thought out correctly.
Reusing templates and URL's helps avoid additional maintenance for the AJAX/non-AJAX versions.
I want my application to be enhanced by AJAX, but also fully
functional without AJAX.
Thinking through the structure of your URLs and templates can go a long way towards this, if you make most of your AJAX requests pull in completely rendered templates (as opposed to just data) then you can usually use the same URL to serve both versions. You just serve only the guts of the modal/form to the AJAX request and the entire page to a regular request.
When should I not use AJAX?
- You should not use AJAX if doing so will cause a poor experience for a significant portion of your user base (there are of course techniques that can be used to mitigate this)
- You should not use AJAX if the development time associated with implementing it will be too significant to justify the improvements in user experience
- You should not use AJAX for content which has significant SEO value without implementing an appropriate fallback that allows it to be indexed (Crawlers are improving constantly but it's still a good idea)
I mean, should I bother making my application usable without AJAX? Or
does everyone have AJAX enabled browsers these days?
I'd say a lot of the time it's unnecessary as the vast majority of users will have AJAX enabled browsers, but there are scenarios where it's critical such as SEO optimization or when a large portion of your user base is likely to use browsers that are less likely to support Javascript as well or where they're likely to have Javascript/AJAX disabled.
A few examples of these scenarios:
- A website for a company or government that uses an outdated browser as standard
- A website where a large portion of the users may be disabled in a manner that may negatively impact their experience such as a website for vision or motor-skill impaired people may be negatively impacted by updating content via AJAX especially if it occurs rapidly.
- A site accessed regularly via a less common device or browser that will cause a negative impact to a large portion of users
So what should I do?
- Think about who is going to be using the site, how they're going to access it, and what they're going to access it with. Also try to think about not just the present but also the future.
- Design the site in a manner that will cater to the majority of these users.
- Think who will gain and who will loose based on my decision to use AJAX and if in doubt have a look at your analytics data to help weigh up the decision and if you lack the data it may be worth updating your tracking and obtaining a sample to aid the decision
- Think does my decision to use AJAX cause any contradictions with core requirements for this project
- Use AJAX to enhance content where possible as opposed to making it mandatory ie the content should work with or without JS/AJAX
- Consider the additional development time involved with the use of AJAX (if any)
