AJAX and UI Concerns

I had a request come across my desk that, as a business requirement, required AJAX. Really? Asking for a specific technology? Definitely interesting that AJAX is to the point that people are requesting it. Obviously AJAX is a means to an end - people really want more sophisticated user interfaces without have server refreshes, and sure, AJAX is probably the way to do that, but interesting that its one of those buzzwords that is starting to take hold (see Wiki, Blog, etc).

Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft technologies, they're certainly putting a lot of effort into teaching people how to use their products. The amount of videos and tutorials out there is really quite amazing.

For a starting point, see below:
http://asp.net/ajax/default.aspx

So in between the time I wrote the first part and the below, I ran across:
http://script.aculo.us/
Didn't sound TOO promising, but whatever - Javascript libraries are great as I don't have to write them myself.

And then I saw the below:
http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/page/print/SortableListsDemo

How cool is that?

Which brings up a really interesting point - who's going to tell me to implement that kind of control? A business analyst? Are they really going to be on the script.aculo.us site and take a look at the demo's? Or download the Ajax Toolkit and tell me which controls they find useful? Should developers implement new UI controls on their own?

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle - UI designers and developers need to communicate more and more efficiently. I attended a user interaction conference in the spring, and the issues that people had with their software engineers was startling. Are we really that difficult to deal with? I think the answer is probably yes, a lot of software engineer's are that difficult, but you're never going to get good products without having a good open dialogue with UI designers, QC analysts - its a team approach that needs to be preached and followed. I think that's one of the reasons people are all over Agile development - it forces people to communicate. This doesn't mean we can't take ideas from Agile and put it into practice with day to day work, though.

More on the ASP.Net Ajax toolkit when I have time to really blog about it.

Links:

Main script.aculo.us site: http://script.aculo.us/
All demos : http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/show/Demos
Sortable Lists: http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/page/print/SortableListsDemo
ASP Ajax: http://asp.net/ajax/default.aspx