Re: Suggested BP for BP 2 : Provide non-AJAX alternatives to your applications

>
> >  Could the user have also a preference on to-AJAX or not AJAX? If he
> >  wants to save battery ... that could be something to discuss
>
> The user may also have a data plan that is not unlimited; in those
> cases she should have control over how much data a page is using.


I think there is danger here of confusing AJAX as a technology with the
practice of dynamically updating / polling pages... In many cases the use of
ajax can significantly save data consumption since you don't have to
download an entire page just to update a single snippet of data.

I don't think it would make sense to create a BP that presented the user
with an AJAX yes/no switch -- apart from the obvious user-experience issues,
I don't think the choice of technology is really the issue so much as the
behaviour of the application.

Maybe the gist of what we're trying to capture here is analogous to the
"meta refresh must have an option to disable" BP. I can see a potentially
very valuable BP that would ward from the practice that is common on desktop
web-pages of continually polling the server for updates behind the scenes...
(ajax makes it easier to do this in a way that is eye-candy friendly, but
ajax itself isn't the culprit here).

This would be very bad on a mobile phone if it wasn't obvious that the page
was quietly polling the server behind the sceneand the user left their
browser open, thus quietly draining their battery and sucking up a heap of
data...

Suggested BP:

BP: If you use ajax requests to poll for updates from the server make sure
that this is explicitly presented to the user and that it can be turned off.
(Be mindful that background polling of the server on a mobile device can
cause costly data-usage and drain the battery. Consider the danger of the
user leaving their browser open...)

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Barbara Ballard <
barbara@littlespringsdesign.com> wrote:

>
> >  Could the user have also a preference on to-AJAX or not AJAX? If he
> >  wants to save battery ... that could be something to discuss
>
> The user may also have a data plan that is not unlimited; in those
> cases she should have control over how much data a page is using.
>
>
> --
> Barbara Ballard
> barbara@littlespringsdesign.com 1-785-838-3003
>
>