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Ask HN: Why don't more blog widgets use AJAX?
My startup (http//scribnia.com) is building a widget that bloggers can embed in their sidebar to enable their users to rate them. We're relying heavily on AJAX to make the rating process more powerful and slick. Among other benefits, using AJAX allows a widget to have multiple "screens"--when a user does something in the widget, the content of the widget changes appropriately.
As per usual, I scoped out all the popular blog widgets as a prelude to the design process in order to see what best practices existed. I was struck by how few widgets use AJAX, or even Javascript. Nearly all blog widgets are just static links, text, and images. Why is this? Am I missing something here?
- mbrubeck 17y agoSome hosted services prevent users from embedding scripts in their content, for security reasons. At blist we decided to use JS, iframes, and Flash in our widgets anyways [1], but it means they won't work in certain contexts. 1. http://www.blist.com/web-publishing http://www.blist.com/web-publishing
- dryicerx 17y agoIf a task can be done properly and does not need AJAX, it doesn't need AJAX. Simplicity. For example, a list of related sites on a blog. It's a bunch of static links and there is nothing wrong with keeping it a bunch of static links. Don't need to make every.single.thing AJAX unless it improves the usability or functionality.
- jack7890 17y agoSure, I totally understand that for many applications AJAX would be overkill. I understand the beauty of simplicity, and the appeal of light widgets. But with that said, AJAX is almost never used, and there are many widgets that could benefit by being more than a bunch of static links. Blog widgets are usually more interesting when they are interactive. AJAX does that.