"It really was about optimizing performance for our end-users and for our servers," Peiris says. "You really want to have
an interactive experience, and you want that to be as high performing as possible without putting a heavy load on the server."
Tools and tips
For those willing to give AJAX a shot, a number of development tools are available. As of this writing, Backbase, JackBe NQ Suite, and Tibco General Interface are the most advanced commercial products in the space -- though each comes with a hefty price tag (see table, "AJAX Developer's
Toolkits," above).
Not to be left out, both Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have released early-access versions of their own AJAX development tools. The Ruby on Rails development framework is another mature tool, and it offers the additional attraction for many developers of being completely
open source.
Whatever tools you use, keep in mind that creating desktoplike applications entails design challenges that Web developers
don't normally confront. For example, users have become accustomed to using the Back button to revert to the previous state
of a Web page. For AJAX-enabled sites, however, the Back button might unload the entire application unexpectedly. Depending
on the nature of the application and its audience, some users may have a hard time adjusting.
Scalix's Palay says his team disabled some browser buttons for exactly this reason. "We present Scalix Web Access and the
[administration] console as desktop applications. When you run them, the window you get has no browser controls," he says.
NetSuite's developers made similar considerations, Peiris says. They settled on a design that splits up major sections of
the application over several "pages" so that users can use the Back button to jump between them. "You can still use your Back
button effectively," Peiris explains. "If you're on the leads dashboard, you can hit Back to get to your sales dashboard."
Jesse James Garrett, director of user experience strategy at Adaptive Path and the originator of the AJAX acronym, says he believes users will learn to adapt to new interfaces, provided that the interfaces
are designed intelligently. "There are lots of ways in which interaction on the Web five years ago was different from the
way it is today," he says. "From year to year, you can see the evolution of those conventions, and users have adapted to that
just fine."
One other note about developing AJAX-based applications: Don't try to slip AJAX into a product just because it's the latest
technology. As ZapThink senior analyst Ron Schmelzer puts it, AJAX by itself isn't a differentiator. No doubt anyone who tries
to sell AJAX-based products -- or any developers who propose using AJAX in-house -- will still have to prove that their implementation
actually does something worthwhile.
"AJAX by itself doesn't mean anything," Schmelzer says. "You can say, 'Hey, I've got AJAX,' but the response is going to be,
'OK, but what does your product do?' "
Given the benefits of AJAX -- both for the front end and in the back office -- Schmelzer says it won't be hard for a lot of
companies to come up with products that use AJAX wisely and in innovative ways. In fact, he says he sees uses for it everywhere
he looks. "A lot of the next versions [of applications] that people will buy -- a lot of those versions will have AJAX based
interfaces," he says. "By this time next year, AJAX will be everywhere."
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