Today, many businesses and persons prefer to use web applications in their daily
work. Until now, most of the websites are being constructed using an old traditional
model. The model implies that whenever someone clicks on a link to get new
information, a request is being sent to an information server. The server prepares, and
returns the new requested information. For the client to take part of the new
information, the client has to reload the whole page with all its content. By using
AJAX-techniques the information flow will be more similar to an ordinary local
application program. That is, only the information that needs to be updated is sent
back to the client browser.
The purpose of this essay was to investigate whether AJAX-techniques can improve
Internet systems, both in user-friendliness and in a development point of view. This
was performed studying two typical cases of web applications. By comparing the two
applications, before and after implementation of AJAX, we could see improvements
with AJAX in all of our investigated aspects. The user can work more efficient in
applications where AJAX is implemented. For example, the application can give more
direct feedback on the user’s actions by working with a much higher level of active
communication. A whole new world of possibilities opens for the developer to
construct applications that were not possible before. The new continuous
communication between server and client creates higher demands on the developer
than before. Since communication occur in the background, error handling is harder to
troubleshoot. In our opinion the advantages of AJAX by far outnumbers the
drawbacks. In the future, more and more developers will use AJAX which will lead to
better solutions of debugging. This is a challenge to the Internet Community, a
challenge that we believe will be met.