An Ajax Reality Worth Worrying About

An anonymous reader writes "This article discusses the hype that currently surrounds Ajax and it's shortcomings. Reliable Ajax frameworks are still under construction, and you should worry about navigation history, bookmarkability, feedback, persistence, concurrency, and security. This article will help you avoid the major problems inherent in Ajax development."

Blame HTTP Post

[Anonymous Coward]

You can blame the HTTP Post mechanism for this. Do you want your confidential details appearing in a URL? No? Then you can't use GET, you have to use POST. And what does the POST spec [w3.org] say? Responses to this method are not cacheable. Not that this would work anyway; consider this, when you click back, is the old data still current? If you've just transferred money out of your account, then definitely not. The only way to ensure that customers don't see incorrect figures (which would draw too many complaints and possibly lawsuits) is to make the posts expire.

I'm sorry, but something better than HTTP/POST/HTML and a web browser is required to solve this problem. Perhaps some sort of interactive web site client which is designed from the ground up to support applications and not just static pages like was the original intent with web browsers.

Re:Blame HTTP Post

[heinousjay]

You don't need anything other than HTTP to support applications that don't require a constant connection. The redirect-after-post [google.com] technique does what you're looking for. It allows the browser view to always reflect model state, which is (or should be) the end goal.