Ajax

I think we talked about ajax, anyways I love ajax and think that all data intensive interactive websites should be using ajax by now. Anytime I can convince a client to use ajax, or I have the budget for it I do implement ajax and the clients are always satisfied. One example of ajax that I did recently was for a non-profit's auction registration form http://mh.realwebstrategy.com/mammashands.org/index.php?action=register

Of course there are some problems with ajax, most commonly when the user clicks the back arrow to reverse one step but instead finds out they have erased all progress made within the ajax application. This is a frustrating issue and has encouraged me to develop some standards of easy to use inner-application breadcrumbs, as well as saving during the application and breaking the app into non-ajax parts so that the back/forward buttons do work occasionaly. I have read many posts and articles about how to resolve these problems but none have been straight forward enough for someone of my somewhat limited javascript background to handle.

My newest craze in web development comes from the flash class that I took this semester. I was having a hard time grasping the concepts of all of the graphical items and movie clip controls until finally we started coding in actionscript and used classes etc. But the best thing I learned in that class is how to use flex, adobe's new framework for building data rich applications in flash using a markup language MXML similar to Microsoft's XAML. An example of one of my creations is here at http://www.lesliehancock.com/flash it shows a photo gallery and digital/printable flier of real estate properties.

I will continue to develop in flex which is really ajax by nature. This way I can deliver more value to my clients quicker and have the final product not only work flawlessly but look professional and trendy!