Pro Blog Design

Comments discussion on "When Ajax Can Help Your Blog"

1. 

   Gautam said:

   ajax has even changed the concept of analytics for ever where we are seeing the importance of page views getting lowered too!!
2. 

   Michael said:

   I use Ajax with the plugin Lytebox. I know I know you probably don’t like it but I always like it when I didn’t have to hit the back button if I just wanted to look at an image real quick.

   The plugin I use also lets me put HTML in the lytebox environment, which is very useful for the occasion when I want to embed a video but don’t want my web pages to take forever to load.
3. 

   AL said:

   I’ve had an idea for an Ajax plugin long ago and I have yet to see someone implement it. Here is it how it goes:

   Usually, you have finite number of posts on the blog’s homepage. Visitors usually have to click a “previous posts” link to get to an older set of posts. How about we remove this requirement, and we let more posts appear as users scroll towards the end of the homepage.

   This has a solid business case:

   Suppose a reader stumbles by your site and is now evaluating whether there’s something interesting and worth subscribing to. One of the things he would do is read headlines and posts excerpts, scrolling down for more. When he’s at the end of the page and still not convinced, the likelihood of him clicking the ‘previous posts’ link is very low and he will most likely abandon the site. If we had Ajax, we would automatically append in more posts, hopefully ones that would convince him to convert (i.e., subscribe).

   Plus, clicking “previous posts” link require a change in mental context from reading to navigating which can be distracting.

   What do you think?
4. 

   Slevi said:

   Isn’t that like how live search brought the results Al? I haven’t used it for quite some time but I believe it kept on adding new results upon scrolling down as well. If it wasn’t live search it was another one, I must say the idea was nice but as something which is seen a lot with AJAX it turned out a bit badly.

   Whenever the server hang up a bit during the process it resulted in no more results being fetched and the user had to reload in order to get to try all over again.

   So the idea of such a system is good, but it might come with some flaws if the server doesn’t catch up on the request quick enough.

   It’s one of the biggest problems with AJAX in general if you ask me, the moment it runs stuck it just runs stuck. Browsers don’t know a refresh solely to kick some life back into the AJAX part again.

   So for polls and comments it’s nice, but anything further than that I’d keep a bit in mind of what the chances are of it failing and what happens if it does.
5. 

   milo said:

   As long as those ajax plugs are not 100% safe and secure
   I won’t recommend them. Reason: recently a prior client lost a complete database due to an attack on his unsecured ajax form.
6. 

   goldfries said:

   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.
7. 

   Michael Martin said:

   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. :(
8. 

   Mommy Zabs said:

   I think when I get some time I”m going to do the comment edit ajax plugin you are talking about.
9. 

   AL said:

   @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.
10. 

    Michael Martin said:

    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. :( )
11. 

    Dominik Lenk said:

    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…
12. 

    Chris Coyier said:

    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.
13. 

    kristarella said:

    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.
14. 

    sarahG said:

    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.
15. 

    Michael Martin said:

    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.
16. 

    edhardy said:

    I am very interested in your article, thank you!
17. 

    Patti Mullen said:

    On my real estate website, there isn’t anywhere to use ajax, but maybe in the future if I get a blog the comments would be a inviting feature for users. Thanks!
18. 

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19. 

    cazare costinesti said:

    Ajax is good because you can hide some elements of your web page. The Google Bot is not able to see all these elements and the website can be more related to the subject.
20. 

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21. 

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