How do you pronounce AJAX? Is it like the football (soccer) team from Holland — Ah-yah-x? Or is it A-Jacks? What this has to do with usability I don’t know, but it’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while.
AJAX is everywhere and for the most part the interfaces have been easier to use. But there are some irritants. For instance, when I use Gmail, I’m irritated that I can’t control when the page gets refreshed. I don’t want to check my email every five minutes. And, I don’t want my web page loaded every five minutes either. And, they don’t give you a way of turning that “feature” off. That bugs me, I don’t want my web pages to be too smart.
And while we’re on this topic, Gmail doesn’t allow you to access your settings in the Basic HTML view. Try it and you get this message:
Settings can only be changed from Gmail’s standard view.
Why? Everything else seems to work in the non-AJAX view.
At the risk of a long-winded rant, let me stop here and point you to Web 3.0 from that usability guy, John Rhodes. Read it.
Technorati Tags: Usability
