Ajax recommendation

[eluser]Shanto[/eluser]
You can use jQuest with eaise. Why jQuery? learn easy, coding easy and fast

[eluser]bretticus[/eluser]
[quote author="garycocs" date="1239784147"]One question I would have is, can you make a site too ajaxy? I know it doesnt help SEO and I'll have to spend a fair bit of time working on the code for no JS as well as JS.[/quote]

That's a great question. I suppose it depends on what you need ajax for. I use it pretty sparingly myself. For example, I have used it lately to populate dropdown menus based on other selections (could be done without ajax too.) I used it to tell if a username was available for registration as the user types it in the text box. Very convienent and a perfect fit for ajax. A real-life example is google auto-complete. In other words, any time you have a lot of data that you want to drill down without having to populate all that data in your page on load, ajax is invaluable.

If you are doing it for eye candy, than yes, it could be a little "too ajaxy." Eye candy is great however, if it makes the GUI more intelligible or provides a convenience.

As for SEO, ajax works great if you stick to hijax principles. Look at the ajax tutorial video for jquery that I previosuly linked too. He gives a great hijax example when he shows linking off to another page if javascrpt is not enabled.

My 2 cents...

[eluser]garycocs[/eluser]
Ya I'm thinking the same as you, I use it for helping with site functionality at the moment, a lot of people reckon that you shouldnt go too deep in a website, that 3 pages deep is probably the most a first time user is going to go.

My ajax limits the page depth by refreshing parts of the page, i.e. next month in the calendar, showing events on a certain day etc.

Nice one for the hijax tip, will be great help I reckon!

[eluser]Iverson[/eluser]
I actually use xAjax along with jQuery. Having to append query strings can be irritating and xAjax makes it so easy with its getFormValues('form-id') function. Plus it gives you the benefit of doing JS within your PHP so you don't have to go back and forth between views and controllers. Then when I want to use jQuery, I can use xAjax to call other javascript.

Code:

function check_username($username)
{
   if(username_exists($username))
   {
      $xajax->script('$.jGrowl("Username exists!");';
   }
   else
   {
      // Continue
   }
}