Sunday, June 15, 2008

Notes: Google I/O State of Ajax

User Experience

Book: Jeff Raskin: The Humane Interface

2 parts:
  Visual design
  Interaction design

User experience expectations have changed dramatically for the web

Google Gears->Gears

Gears Demo 1:
  A neat demo was shown with gears being used as a background
    processing thread
  Common pattern for doing long running tasks
    Spawn a background thread keeps the UI responsive
    Can't really do that in the browser
    Complex Javascript fights repainting... both share same thread
    Gears can do this though!!

Gears Demo 2:
  Form History pattern
    like Time Machine
    Replacement for undo
    Can go back in time to different states of form
    Trying to implement undo is hard (instead of warning dialogs)
      The browser has its own undo stack
      2 dueling undo stacks? -> Confusion

Gears is really amping up responsiveness!

Gears Demo 3:
  Demo-ed a growls like widget for web applications

Unobtrusive Javascript:
  An application that degrades gracefully in environments where
  javascript/ajax might not be available
    Progressive enhancement
  Does your application still work?

No comments: