AJAX or not AJAX? That's the question...

I heard a lot of developers saying that they will move some function to AJAX, that's better, quick, WEB 2.0 etc etc. But one thing we must keep in mind before deciding is where I'll really have benefits moving to AJAX?

I usually point somethings to my friends about AJAX adoption. You'll really improve your system and your user experience if:

• The function does not infer on the rest of the page, for an example, loading a list of cities based on the selected State.
• Business rules checking. Why let the user post the data if you could know before the post that something's wrong? This will help users bandwidth and experience as well.
• Dynamic bahavior of the page based on user input. Again, the same reason of the above item.
• Large page post backs. If for any reason, you got a really large page, you should think about moving the persistence to AJAX. I say this because of an issue me and one friend found. The large page, causes a large post and just the post back, without any persistence method was very slow. When we moved the persistence to AJAX, the performance was incredible!

As you can see it's not always that you will really improve your system quality, performance and user experience. But you must be aware of just move on AJAX for move. If there isn't a such good reason, then the move will be a waste of time and resources.

Did you improve your application with AJAX? Do you think it was a correct or a mistake move? Tell me, leave your comment!

See ya.

Chilá!@!