I absolutely agree, many use new techonlogy just for the sake of it. Sure AJAX is cool, but being able to bookmark something is way cooler for me, my dad and my dog.
Let’s make a test. I recently developed something at work (a product filter), where many will see AJAX written all over it.
Have a look at the movie on my “Blog”:http://www.stefanseiz.com/archives/2005/12/ajax_just_because_we_can.html and let me know wether this is AJAX or not? Should open an interesting discussion.
URL to the “Article”:http://www.stefanseiz.com/archives/2005/12/ajax_just_because_we_can.html
http://www.stefanseiz.com/archives/2005/12/ajax_just_because_we_can.html
URL to the “Movie”:http://www.stefanseiz.com/movies/Ajax.mov
http://www.stefanseiz.com/movies/Ajax.mov
PS: Textile sucks. It wouldn’t let me create two links on one line ;-)
I am using firefox 1.5 (final) on linux, and was blocked from the site. I emailed the gap webmaster with this information and a request not to block unknown browsers. The following is the response I got this morning.
———————————————————————————————————
Thank you for your e-mail. We apologize for the difficulties you
experienced on our site. Currently we support AOL, Netscape Navigator,
Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Firefox for PC users. Unfortunately,
we temporarily do not support Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh,
or the operating system Linux. Our developers are aware of this issue
and hope to have this resolved soon.
———————————————————————————————————
I suspect that this is a clasic example of a blanket “deny” rule and then some allows for their known working browsers. I made the suggestion that they consider allowing all browsers and adding a notice for the ones that they knew were not working. I suspect FF 1.5 is fully functional, but that their regexes are not open ended enough!
Copy & paste the code below to embed this comment.
Philip Jarrell
My company is in the middle of designing a completely new ecommerce application for selling vacations online. The current application is good, but not good enough. The idea is to move more people to purchase online, instead of the call center. That means we have to create a better experience for the guest.
The IA’s for this project are very excited about the newest technology available, ie. AJAX. The problem is, they have no idea how to use it properly. This very argument occured a couple days ago in a wireframe review. AJAX is great, but as your article mentioned, only valuable when used in the right way for the right things.
I am forwarding this link to them, and the other web developers at my company. Hopefully this will make them think before trying to create something that is just cool.
Copy & paste the code below to embed this comment.
Giovanni Baldini
Browser detection on gap.com is based on UA self-description.
Using FF 1.5 on Ubuntu Linux 5.04 and switching the user agent string to IE on Win XP (via User Agent Switcher extension) I can access the whole gap.com.
As you can guess nothing is wrong and as far as I can see all that cool (?) layout renders properly. Yes, including menus scrolling up and down and all the rest.
I did everything, including an order, stopping only when requested to give real money.
It worked.
Copy & paste the code below to embed this comment.
Linh Vu
That Gap.com example is perfect. I’m getting blocked from their site using FF 1.0.7, Ubuntu 5.04, but I can access it using IE 6.0 Wine. As far as I can see, there’s nothing too exciting about their so-called innovative tools (the layout and menu look fairly standard to me, unless their old ones really sucked) and nothing that Linux can’t cope with. “You spoke. We listened”. I wonder if their customers told them to block Linux users.
I think amazon did a great job with the one click buy button. No doubt alot of time went into making it but to patent the idea is a little much in my opinon, but none the less a great job
I don’t understand companies like GAP that allow technology to prevail over their brand experience. They should see usability as an opportunity to go beyond their competitors and develop a user experience that is on-par with their brand. I e-mailed their website technical support when I could not visit it in Safari any longer. They responded and politely told me that they do not support Internet Explorer for the Mac (my e-mail to them said nothing about Internet Explorer). Then they had a canned message suggesting that Mac Safari users can solve their problem by downloading Firefox. I have nothing against Firefox and use it all the time, but I wouldn’t consider forcing users to switch applications to be a solution. Their online brand experience no longer lives up to their in-store brand experience. Too bad.
29 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleStefan Seiz
I absolutely agree, many use new techonlogy just for the sake of it. Sure AJAX is cool, but being able to bookmark something is way cooler for me, my dad and my dog.
Let’s make a test. I recently developed something at work (a product filter), where many will see AJAX written all over it.
Have a look at the movie on my “Blog”:http://www.stefanseiz.com/archives/2005/12/ajax_just_because_we_can.html and let me know wether this is AJAX or not? Should open an interesting discussion.
URL to the “Article”:http://www.stefanseiz.com/archives/2005/12/ajax_just_because_we_can.html
http://www.stefanseiz.com/archives/2005/12/ajax_just_because_we_can.html
URL to the “Movie”:http://www.stefanseiz.com/movies/Ajax.mov
http://www.stefanseiz.com/movies/Ajax.mov
PS: Textile sucks. It wouldn’t let me create two links on one line ;-)
Anonymous Blogger
Does using AJAX still allow for section 508 accessibility?
Caleb Maclennan
I am using firefox 1.5 (final) on linux, and was blocked from the site. I emailed the gap webmaster with this information and a request not to block unknown browsers. The following is the response I got this morning.
———————————————————————————————————
Thank you for your e-mail. We apologize for the difficulties you
experienced on our site. Currently we support AOL, Netscape Navigator,
Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Firefox for PC users. Unfortunately,
we temporarily do not support Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh,
or the operating system Linux. Our developers are aware of this issue
and hope to have this resolved soon.
———————————————————————————————————
I suspect that this is a clasic example of a blanket “deny” rule and then some allows for their known working browsers. I made the suggestion that they consider allowing all browsers and adding a notice for the ones that they knew were not working. I suspect FF 1.5 is fully functional, but that their regexes are not open ended enough!
Philip Jarrell
My company is in the middle of designing a completely new ecommerce application for selling vacations online. The current application is good, but not good enough. The idea is to move more people to purchase online, instead of the call center. That means we have to create a better experience for the guest.
The IA’s for this project are very excited about the newest technology available, ie. AJAX. The problem is, they have no idea how to use it properly. This very argument occured a couple days ago in a wireframe review. AJAX is great, but as your article mentioned, only valuable when used in the right way for the right things.
I am forwarding this link to them, and the other web developers at my company. Hopefully this will make them think before trying to create something that is just cool.
Long live the guest!!!!
Giovanni Baldini
Browser detection on gap.com is based on UA self-description.
Using FF 1.5 on Ubuntu Linux 5.04 and switching the user agent string to IE on Win XP (via User Agent Switcher extension) I can access the whole gap.com.
As you can guess nothing is wrong and as far as I can see all that cool (?) layout renders properly. Yes, including menus scrolling up and down and all the rest.
I did everything, including an order, stopping only when requested to give real money.
It worked.
Linh Vu
That Gap.com example is perfect. I’m getting blocked from their site using FF 1.0.7, Ubuntu 5.04, but I can access it using IE 6.0 Wine. As far as I can see, there’s nothing too exciting about their so-called innovative tools (the layout and menu look fairly standard to me, unless their old ones really sucked) and nothing that Linux can’t cope with. “You spoke. We listened”. I wonder if their customers told them to block Linux users.
Ashley Bowers
I think amazon did a great job with the one click buy button. No doubt alot of time went into making it but to patent the idea is a little much in my opinon, but none the less a great job
Grant Blakeman
I don’t understand companies like GAP that allow technology to prevail over their brand experience. They should see usability as an opportunity to go beyond their competitors and develop a user experience that is on-par with their brand. I e-mailed their website technical support when I could not visit it in Safari any longer. They responded and politely told me that they do not support Internet Explorer for the Mac (my e-mail to them said nothing about Internet Explorer). Then they had a canned message suggesting that Mac Safari users can solve their problem by downloading Firefox. I have nothing against Firefox and use it all the time, but I wouldn’t consider forcing users to switch applications to be a solution. Their online brand experience no longer lives up to their in-store brand experience. Too bad.
Michael Straker
You’d have thought that the practice of telling users to download a different browser would have died five or ten years ago. Sheeeesh.