Comments on: When Ajax Can Help Your Blog

By: Michael Martin

Michael Martin — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 19:58:10 +0000

Dominik – That’s quite an undertaking. I hope you pull it off well.

Chris – That was one of the ones I mentioned enyoying as well (I called it “Comment previews.”). Glad we’re agreed!

Kristarella – Agreed. I love the circle loaders for some reason. I’m not quite sure what it is about them, but they’re a really nice animation. (And you could be right about the extra navigation. We had a recent posts list originally, but replaced it with popular content. Will have to think about it!)

Sarah – It is very handy! I know that I’ve had to edit a couple of my own comments here on PBD, and I’m just as likely to make mistakes elsewhere. Edit comments is a great thing for readers.

By: sarahG

sarahG — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:57:53 +0000

I use the Edit comments and comment preview. The edit comments is so handy. Few people actually use them however I use them a great deal. So much easier if I need to update a comment (usually my own!) than logging into the back end and finding it in there! Or quickly correcting people’s spelling mistakes.

By: kristarella

kristarella — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:59:51 +0000

I would love to have AJAX comments – I’ve noticed recently that everytime I leave a comment (on other blogs) the page reloads and it takes longer than I want to wait for it… it’s nice when a little circle whizzes around (background image thing) and voila, comment is there.

p.s. I was just thinking that a little bit more navigation wouldn’t go astray here. I know you want to keep things to a minimum and not have superfluous stuff on the page, but either a recent posts list or a next/previous post link might be nice. Just so one doesn’t have to go back to the homepage to get somewhere other than the most popular posts.

By: Chris Coyier

Chris Coyier — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:55:15 +0000

The best use for AJAX on blogs is the “look at your comment as you type it” thing a lot of blogs have. That’s pretty boss.

By: Dominik Lenk

Dominik Lenk — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 23:59:58 +0000

I’d love to use ajax on my blog, however, I am a complete javascript noob. Nevertheless, I am now trying to create my whole weblog archive in ajax, as part of my webpage redesign.
Previously I used a nifty plugin for expression engine to update comments using ajax. Not that I get that many comments, yet, but it sure helps to brush up the overall appearance of your site, or if somebody posted a ‘halfway’ suitable comment. And it is a lot quicker than using the expression engine interface…

By: Michael Martin

Michael Martin — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:35:04 +0000

MZ – Cool. It’s a very useful plugin, even if I haven’t gotten around to implementing it here either! xD

AL – I don’t use that script, but I do use a similar one to amend the Google search results. It works very well. (And I know what you mean about the K2 one. To a user, it’s the exact same as it is without the ajax. They’re still clicking links. )

By: AL

AL — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:18:48 +0000

@Michael Yeah I have. As a matter of fact, my blog's currently built on K2, but I've removed the AJAX-ified previous posts navigation feature of K2 because it wasn't very intuitive and properly placed. Just to follow up on my earlier comment, have you guys tried the Pagerization Greasemonky script? I think it pretty much sums up and implements what I'm trying to do with blogs.

By: Mommy Zabs

Mommy Zabs — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:18:03 +0000

I think when I get some time I”m going to do the comment edit ajax plugin you are talking about.

By: Michael Martin

Michael Martin — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:48:37 +0000

Gautam – True. It kicked up a fair bit of fuss not long ago when Nielson started talking about a time-on-page metric. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Michael – There are some great uses of the lightbox technologies, but not all of them are so. I don’t like how none of the image is shown until the whole thing is loaded though. It’s fine with small images, but with larger ones I don’t always have the patience to wait unfortunately. (That said, I can definitely think of some fantastic examples of its use! Not least in login forms…)

AL – That’s a pretty interesting idea. Have you ever seen the K2 theme for WordPress? It’s not the same idea, but they do use Ajax for listing those posts.

I like your idea, and I’ve enjoyed seeing that effect in quite a few places. It might even help people with duplicate content penalties (You don’t necessarily want a second/third etc. home page with your post excerpts!).

Slevi – You’re being a little harsh on it. I use a couple of Ajax apps online, and they haven’t frozen yet. Granted, they’re probably well hosted, but they’ve still never had trouble.

milo – Ouch. I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you how secure any of them are. I’ve never tested, and even if I had, it’s definitely not my strong point…

goldfries – That’s a good example. Little things like that really can get annoying at times.

I think you summed it up when you said “AJAX is cool.” It is, and too many people use it just because of that.

By: goldfries

goldfries — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:48:28 +0000

AJAX is cool but not always the best choice.

Say for example you’re using Netvibes and you accidently dragged a box to some other location or even closed it, there’s no way to click the BACK button or anything else to undo unless someone builds something that track your steps.