Next Generation Web Sites — Courtesy of AJAX

by Joe Dysart

What's New

October 2006

The next time you come across a university web site that roars through interactions like a Lamborghini, think AJAX. Chances are, the site is using this new programming technique to leave web visitors satisfied much more quickly - and just a bit awestruck.

Joe Dysart

The secret behind AJAX's speed is its ability to deliver point-and-click requests for additional data, without forcing the web site to render a new web page each time to display that new information.

"AJAX can mean the difference between forcing visitors to wait long periods for multiple photos to load - or enable those photos to load instantaneously," says Byron Matheson, CEO of Clear Nova, a software maker that supplies AJAX toolkits to web designers.

Plus, AJAX programming is speeding up other facets of web sites. Supplemental text about your institution loads in a fraction of a time using the technology. Details on specific courses come back much quicker and forms that students complete online at your site will be processed more swiftly.

To get an idea just how much faster AJAX can make a site, check out Yahoo! Instant Search. Here, instead of punching in a few keywords for your search and waiting for a new page to deliver the search results, Yahoo! Instant Search spits the results back to you almost instantaneously - and on the same page.

For other examples of AJAX in action, check out: Google Maps; Flickr and Kayak.com.

Like what you see? You can get tool kits to program your own site with AJAX from this representative sampling of toolmakers: Thinkcap JX, from Clear Nova; TIBCO General Interface 3.0, from TIBCO and AJAX, from Microsoft.

Joe Dysart is an internet speaker and business consultant based in Thousand Oaks, California. Reach him  by e-mail at joe@joedysart.com.