AJAX

I am very interested in this “new” technology that is sweeping across the web. Interactive web pages is something that I think is the future of applications. I have developed quite a few applications using ASP or ASP.Net and am constantly annoyed by the limitations and technical difficulties. Seeing what is being done using AJAX has impressed me greatly. I love the Google Maps and GMail interfaces and reducing the number of server round-trips for the user would make everyones life easier. The Wikipedia article on AJAX is a very good read and covers the basics and some of the issues.

At this point I am still on the fence about using JavaScript so extensively. I have always been concerned with using it too much. It can easily be turned off or not supported consistently on the client side which would break the functionality of the site without a lot of extra programming to cover all the possibilities. My main concern however is that the JavaScript can be modified by the user using things like GreaseMonkey. After you send a website off to the user you have to check everything on its return. Its been proven many times over that you can’t trust JavaScript form validation and have to rely on server side validation when the page comes back. Since AJAX uses JavaScript heavily it is very tempting to trust the user and I believe some designers with fall into this old problem with this “new” technology.

Time will tell if I am right about the security issues but for those out there with the know how and the loose morals, get ready for an explosion of sites that are vulnerable to well known attacks.

EDIT: I am definatly leaning toward the pro side after reading this article and checking out some of the applications (especially kiko).