TEERA 2.0: Vancouver Sun

Aside from my study and my role at Sun, I also work part time as freelance 
web developer for some extra cash and fun. A few months ago, a client had asked 
me to ajaxify her online store website. I was puzzled by the request 
as I had already  made the site asynchrony whereever appropriate on the last 
update. So I asked her more specifically of what she wants. 
Here are list of things she suggested to add on her site:

- Slider bar for scrolling item catalogs

- Drag and drop item on the shopping cart
- Fade in-out effect on item images on mouseover
- Showing loading image when user try to login to 

It's now evident to me that what she wanted was not AJAX but client-side effects 
from DHTML/JavaScript. 

Later, I also found that this misunderstanding of AJAX is quite common, 
even to junior computing science students. A friend of mine who is quite 
new to programming had asked me to help him put some neat AJAX effects on 
his school assignments. His idea of AJAX was not much different than that 
of my client.

It seems to me that what these people miss is the meaning 
of the first 'A' for 'Asynchronous' in AJAX. This is not
surprising since asynchronous process is supposed to be running in the 
background by definition. Also, most of online demo and example of AJAX 
are always accompanied by cool client-side scripting effects. So, to people
who can be careless about web programming, AJAX often means 'cool looking client 
side effect' rather than its original meaning (as coined by Jesse James Garrett).

In my opinion, this is quite ironic. I think the most essential quality of
AJAX is that first 'A' that allows developers to deliver seamless data-driven 
web application and wonderful UI experience to users.