ShutterBook creators thoughts on AJAX
If we talk about the usage of AJAX in web based applications, the question that come back always is when can we use AJAX, and when AJAX can't provide an answer to the service created. In a recent interview with the creators of ShutterBook, the new online photo sharing service I asked them about AJAX. Shutterbook is using Flash and PHP as web interface and the backend.
AJAX has its limitations and those limitations happen to be in the direction we're heading in. We're creating a much richer user experience - one that integrates elegant slideshows, music, videos, and extensive printing options. More and more Flash is becoming a great platform to work on for these kinds of features. I think AJAX style development is great and I'm sure we'll be using it here and there in the near future but I don't see us dumping the Flash platform to go completely AJAX any time soon.
Certainly the two points that Dzuy pointed to is that their service isn't only photo sharing, they offer also music, videos and many other printing options and Flash have already proved its capabilities to offer rich applications specially with the its recent development and improvments.
SlideShows and drag and drop features could be easily done with AJAX (not very easily though) but let's talk about design of AJAX applications, certainly this will be the second point because design of AJAX applications still not the easy task. While Macromedia Flash offers great features for desingers in additions to its API and Action scripts.
We talk always about why people have choosed AJAX, but its interesting to know why others didn't choose it.
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