Progressive Enhancement in Ajax

Technological advances have given us a lot of gadgets that are able to handle complicated websites, applications and games. A computer today could be easily outshined in less than a year because of the constant updates on hardware. Five years ago, the hard disk capacity of a computer is usually limited to 80GB but today, a computer could easily handle 1TB (Terabyte) worth of data.

However, technological advancement will never sway anyone to just let go of their old gadgets. A computer purchased three years ago could still be preferred to the latest computer today because the old computer is still useful for basic functions and the new gadget is still very expensive.

The disparity of technological capabilities of different computing devices has discouraged developers in building complicated and memory intensive websites and applications. This is especially true in building Ajax based applications. Computers need to have very powerful processors to handle this type of websites even though most Ajax based applications will never have high bandwidth requirement.

To answer that dilemma for different device capabilities, progressive enhancement should be introduced in Ajax based applications. This type of enhancement will ensure every device will have the capability of accessing the data offered by the application.

Progressive enhancement will require the developer build the website first in its simplest form – in HTML. Every device with different bandwidth capabilities can easily handle HTML enabled devices. But application development doesn’t stop there.

Implementing progressive enhancement for Ajax will require the developer to add layers on top of HTML functions. These layers are geared towards accessibility for more powerful computing devices. Since they have powerful computers and good bandwidth, access to this more complication form of applications is very easy.

Developers could easily accomplish adding JavaScript functions on top of HTML by adding layers in CSS. Through CSS, different layers could be applied which could be geared towards development of the interface as well as functionality of the application. The HTML version already has their design and they can just be applied with a specific layer for visualization.

This is also the same in building a layer on top of HTML geared towards interactivity with JavaScript functions. This type of development is entirely different in creating a website for mobile versions since no specific address is needed for a lighter version. Server load is also minimized since it will provide the user an option of accessing the website in a lighter form.

The clear advantage of this setting is to enable easy access of the website to different devices especially for mobile browsers. The increasing number of mobile devices that has the ability to access websites should be acknowledged by developers. In using progressive enhancement, they are building an application with different versions at once.

The need for developing an entirely new application with another programming language is then removed. Developers would just have to use the available functions offered by the simpler versions and apply JavaScript counterparts to build a highly effective Ajax based applications. Developers for progressive enhancement might need additional time for web development but their Ajax based applications could be used in any place, in any time, at any gadget.