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AJAX: It's frames all over again

Other·Calvin Correli·Apr 11, 2006· 1 minutes

Ajaxian: “However, does it make sense to click on a category, see a “loading”message, and then re-render in the same page? I don’t really think so. “

This is just the 2006 version of frames, with all the problems that frames get you: Loss of the address bar, and loss of search engine visibility. In one app I’m building, I scaled back my use of Ajax, so distinct objects (products in a shop is a good example) has separate URLs.

Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. And adding a separate permalink mechanism doesn’t solve the problem, either, because now you have to learn a new way to produce a link for each site you visit, instead of the tried-and-true way. And there’s no keyboard shortcut. With the address bar, Cmd-L, Cmd-A, Cmd-C, Cmd-TAB, Cmd-V copies and pastes the URL into another application, and is already firmly entrenched in my tactile memory.