Inspirated

Google is obsessed with AJAX.

No, really. It’s starting to get on my nerves now. For those who’re unfamiliar with the term AJAX, it’s a combination of technologies (like Javascript) that, in essence, allow you to navigate on a web-page quickly without reloading the whole thing. The most prominent example people may recall is of Gmail’s interface.

So, why is it such a bad thing? Here’s the answer: it isn’t. When used properly, it can be great. Gmail, once again stands out as one of the leading examples here. Nevertheless, like any other technology, it has the potential of being abused. And, AJAX, when abused, can only be surpassed in terms of pure annoyance by Flash and Java. Quite surprisingly, the most effective example of “what not to do with AJAX” is also provided by Google, with its recent redesign of the social networking website Orkut.

In my opinion, Orkut is already a lost cause. No, not because Facebook is better. When Facebook started taking Orkut’s share, it wasn’t because Facebook was technologically superior to Orkut. And until just yesterday, I considered Orkut to be superior in at least that regard.

But now, Google decides to make all of Orkut’s pages empty. That’s right. Empty. All stuff would be loaded in those pages using AJAX and here’s the insane thing: they’re uniquely identified by anchors. That’s batshit insane. From a browser’s point of view, all of Orkut is a single page now. Stuff is just loaded on it dynamically using identifiable anchors like #Home.aspx. And no, there isn’t any fallback version. You just can’t use Orkut without Javascript now. All CGI-proxy access to Orkut (using sites like KProxy) is also broken now. My Orkut login frequency, thus, has taken a considerable hit and I really don’t think I’ll be using it even on weekly bases.

Aeternum vale, Orkut.