RobertBolton.com

Sitepoint has an interesting interview with Jacob Nielson about usability and AJAX. One of the points Nielson brought up really strikes a cord with me. He says “It’s important to remember that most web sites are not used repeatedly. Usually, users will visit a given page only once.”. I think this is key when deciding whether to implement functionality with DHTML/AJAX. If it is a content management system or some other web application that people will continually use, you can expect more from them. They may (definitely not always) be willing to spend time learning how to use the features in order to make themselves more productive.

Conversely, on public facing websites, people want to access information as quick as possible without spending the effort nor time to learn something new. So if you create some fancy effects that are not in widespread use, you run the risk of confusing people and causing them to abandon the site. Add to this the skill-level, if you can call it that, of the average internet user and certain DHTML effects can be downright confusing. I recently saw someone somewhat baffled by Google’s mapping application. They didn’t realize you could scroll by clicking the mouse and moving it and they didn’t know how to effectively use the controls to pan in and out. For this person, MapQuest might be a better site in their eyes because it behaves as they would expect. Of course, as more applications make use of DHTML, the average user’s familiarity will increase. But this functionality is brand spanking new for the most part and the average user doesn’t know nor care about AJAX or how cool drop and drop components are…

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 10:15 pm and is filed under JavaScript. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.