Web Standards Group

Meetings

February meeting (Melbourne)

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Date: Thursday 01 February, 2007

Podcast

What Has Ajax Done For Us Anyway? (medium quality)
James Edwards (Brothercake)
09-February-2007 WSG Melbourne meeting
Presentation slides
Event Photos (Flickr)
Duration: 34:07 - File size: 31.24 MB
James talks about appropriate (and inappropriate) uses of Ajax, and advises developers to follow the principles of "accessibility first, then usability, then aesthetics".

Event Details

UK-based JavaScript guru and web accessibility advocate James Edwards is in Melbourne, and has kindly agreed to give a presentation entitled What has Ajax done for us anyway?

Synopsis

What has Ajax done for us anyway?

The best bits of Web 2.0 -- social networking, tagging, folksonomies -- are conceptual not technological, and we don't really need Ajax to implement them. We can build these next-generation apps without destroying accessibility or riding roughshot through user expectations.

In this presentation, I won't be trying to tell you not to use Ajax, or decrying it as "evil" or "fundamentally inaccessible". I won't spend a lot of time criticising bad examples -- unconstructive criticism is all too easy, and bad examples don't mean that a general principle is bad.

But I will be exploring and advocating the option of not using Ajax, on a case-by-case basis, as a solution or workaround to the problems it can create. And I'll be looking at some of the darlings of Web 2.0, to see how much of what they do really needs Ajax to make it work well.

James Edwards

James Edwards headshot James Edwards (aka brothercake) is a freelance web developer based in the United Kingdom, specialising in advanced JavaScript programming and accessible web site development.

He is an outspoken advocate of standards-based development, an active member of WaSP (The Web Standards Project), and creator of the Ultimate Drop Down Menu system -- the first commercial DHTML menu to be WCAG compliant. James was also co-author of The JavaScript Anthology, published by SitePoint in 2006.

Meeting Time?

6:30pm - 7:00pm - Nibbles, drinks and networking
7:00pm - 8:00pm - James Edwards on What has Ajax done for us anyway?
8:00pm onwards - port80 drinks and socialising at Charles Dickens tavern across the road

Where Do We Meet?

Meetings are now held at the Victorian government's excellent Centre for Innovation & Technology Commercialisation.

Centre for Innovation & Technology Commercialisation
Level 1, 257 Collins Street
Melbourne VIC 3000

View a map to the venue.

Cost?

There is no cost to attend. No, really! Food and beverages are kindly being made available thanks to SitePoint. SitePoint is a Melbourne-based company who, when not handing out free pizza, publish articles and books on best practice web development, with a focus on web standards. Their discussion forums are also home to the web's most active web development community, so I encourage you to check them out at James Edwards

Comments

Posted: 06-Feb-07 by Matthew Magain

Continuing on the discussion about Ajax and assistive technology, here are the links that Andrew Arch mentioned at the end of the meeting:

http://juicystudio.com/article/making-ajax-work-with-screen-readers.php
http://juicystudio.com/article/improving-ajax-applications-for-jaws-users.php