If Jesus Had A Website

Unfortunately, my mother passed away Wednesday night at age 54 after almost two months of battling with cancer in her brain. Here's to a wonderful woman who was the greatest mother a guy could have asked for. It was a shame to see her go, but at least I was able to be there for her, and she is now at peace.

Things are going to be on a little hiatus here for the next week, because there's too much going on and to deal with in that time. Once things settle down, I'll try to get back in the swing of things.

In the meantime, your prayers for me and my family are appreciated as we deal with the loss of a loved one who seemed to leave us too soon.

After taking a look at what AJAX is last week, this week I'm taking a look at the pros and cons of using it in web design. Like any tool, it has its strenghts and weaknesses, and it's important to understand those to better utilze its functionality.

PROS

• Update Only What You Need To On A Page – Take the poll on the right as an example. Currently, when a vote is submitted, a whole new page is loaded from the server into the browser. However, if I were to implement the poll using AJAX, I could have only the poll section of the page reload when a vote is cast.
• Save Server Processing and Bandwitdth – If you've got a lot of pages where only a small portion of the page needs to be changed, then implementing AJAX can cut down on the number and size of calls to the server.
• Separation of Data From Layout and Style – Using AJAX allows you to keep the data separate from layout and style by only loading the data that needs loaded and maintaining the main layout and styles already defined by the initial page.

CONS

• Not All Users Have JavaScript Enabled - For security reasons, a percentage of users have blocked JavaScripts from running, so these users won't see AJAX functionality. This can be accounted for in your code in terms of site functionality, but you won't get the same performance benefits with these users.
• Not All Users Have The Same Version of JavaScript Installed – So, any bleeding edge functionality my error out on some computers. This may result in the need for more testing on different versions of JavaScript available in different browsers to make sure they all work as expected.
• AJAX Can Break Site Pageflow – AJAX functionality breaks the use of the back button in most browsers, so any segment of your page you implement it on needs to have a way to get back to if there is any need to users to do so.
• Most Search Engines Can't Reach AJAX Content - Since search engines don't typically, enable JavaScript support most search engines won't be able to reach AJAX enabled content. In order to make sure that this content can still be indexed, the equivalent data will need to be available at a public URL.

As you can see, there are certainly some cases that make better choices for AJAX content, and some where implementing AJAX can be more trouble than it is worth. Take the time to decide how you wante to use AJAX on your site to determine if it is the best choice for your site.

Next week, we'll start taking a look at how to implement basic AJAX functionality on a site. Be sure to swing by then!

In the internet world of Web2.0, you've probably heard something about AJAX. After all, it would be pretty hard to not have heard of it if you're a webmaster, designer or developer. However, I've found that many people don't have a full understanding of what AJAX is, can do, and what the benefits and drawbacks are. I have to say, I'm one of these people, as I know something about it, but definately could learn some more.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be taking time to learn some more about AJAX myself, and sharing my journey with all of you, much like I did more succintly with CSS last year. Hopefully, you'll learn a little bit from this as I do.

Let's start with "What AJAX Is". AJAX is short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, meaning that it is a web development technique, not a new programming language. The use of JavaScript and XML also means that any modern web browser and web server should provide the basic support needed to implement AJAX code.

Typically, when you place a link on a page, it leads to another full page. So even if 90% of the content is the same, the whole new page needs to be sent by the server and processed by the browser. What is unique about AJAX is that it allows you to focus that link to only update a certain portion of the page. So with AJAX, if you only want to update that 10% of the page, you can, saving bandwidth.

AJAX is also nothing new, as many of it's features have been available to developers for nearly a decade now. Out of the roots of Remote Scripting, the process slowly developed until the term AJAX was coined by Jesse James Garrett in 2005.

When used right, these calls can also make a page much more interactive, with features like search-term suggestions, tooltips, or even whole sites contained in the framework of a single page. What this does is open up more atypical page design options for us web people to work with and explore, and we're just begging to see where those options will lead us in the future.

Next week, we'll take a look more closely at the benefits and drawbacks of using AJAX, so be sure to check in then.

When I was in college, PowerPoint was just coming into regular use by most of the faculty for their lectures. To this day I've seen my fair share of them, and I can quickly tell the difference between one that was well thought out and one that was quickly thrown together. In a poorly designed presentation, some of the typical problems will be:

• Pointless Slides – This is the person who is constantly pressing the "next" button because their slides don't have very much substance. They'll go through a hundred slides in a 5 minute presentation, and you're left thinking more about how many slides they actually used than their subject matter.

• Heavy Slides – These are slides that have so much information that you'd think they'd just fall off the screen. Because there is so much there, it makes it very difficult to identify the relevant information on the slide, even if the lecturer highlights it.

• Distracting Slides – Clearly, somebody got a little bored while working on their presentation, so they added their favorite video clip, song or image to the presentation to "spice it up". However, they can break up the point of the presentation if they are not relevant to the topic being discussed. Among the bad ideas: using a Flintstones clip during a palentology lecture.

• Poor Contrast Choices – This presentation usually begins with "Well, it looked fine on my computer at home", but you can't read half the text because of the background chosen. Just one reason why high-contrast is a good thing.

If you're seeing where I'm going, you'll see that many of these same problems can be made with web pages as well. So, here's the tips we can gather from the mistakes of others (and ourselves, in some cases):

• Make Every Page Have A Purpose – Try to avoid linking to a page of links (i.e. a directory structure) unless you need to do so. There are a number of alternatives (including CSS menus and drop-down box directories) that will allow you to do the same more efficiently and effectively.

• Don't Inundate Your Visitors – Avoid overwhelming your visitors with too many options to read and click on, and keep page text to a reasonable length. Some pages may require more text on them, such as an "About Our Beliefs" or "Our History" page, so try and break them down into sub-sections with in-page links at the top of the page for easier navigation.

• Don't Try To Re-Create Homer's Website – Make sure everything on your page has a purpose, and that you're not just using images or other features just because you can.

• Let Me See What You've Got – Lastly, make sure that you put text in high-contrast situations because some monitors don't display subtle color differences particularly well. Just because it worked for you, don't assume that it will for everyone else.

Well, it looks like my North American breatheren make up the majority of IJHAW readers, which is probably for the best because I'm probably most familiar with the contemporary American church, so that's the typical perspective I come from. Plus, I really only know English and a little bit of Spanish, and that's probably ruling out a lot of potential readers in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Eventually I may have to work on that, but for now, it is what it is.

Oh, and whoever cast the vote saying they live in Antartica, either you're a penguin with very good technical skills, or you're not being entirely truthful. I'm calling shennanigans on that one!

March's poll brings up one of the annual discussions between myself and my best friend Wade, who is a Lutheran pastor. He asks what my church is doing for Lent, and I would tell him that my church (and denomination, the Assemblies of God) doesn't celebrate Lent. Then he'll ask why, and I'll explain that they view it as an old tradition that isn't biblically supported as something everyone should do during the season. However, I will make certain sacrafices for Lent if I feel so called by the Lord.

I'm probably in the minority on this one, but I'm curious to find out what everyone else does, from the strict observance, to the non-traditional observance, to the non-observance, and to the non-observant. And don't worry, nobody will think any less of you whatever you pick, since it's for research purposes only.