Flash or Ajax for Elxis?

[de-active]

I want some animation on my website, so was wondering what would be better for this  in terms of Elxis functioning and effectiveness, along with browser and user experience: Flash animation or Ajax?

The only drawbacks I can see is that for Flash, the browser would need a flash plugin and many browsers may not already have that installed but Ajax is javascript (?).

So my question is what would be better for Elxis and user experience?

Thanks

[Ivan Trebješanin]

That is personal decicion, but if SEO and many other reasons are taken into concern AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is much better. However, I don't like flash personally for many reasons, so you have to find your own way.

[de-active]

I like Flash in terms of the quality animations or end results but I don't like it because it's slow, not that SEO friendly (is Ajax SEO friendlier?) and compatibility with browsers i.e it's not native of a browser to have flash plugin built in - so it's not good, specially for an e-commerce site.

Is Ajax native to most major browsers or does it need a further plugin? (I know JS needs to be turned on but most browsers already have this turned on)

Would you like to expound upon your personal reasons, as these could maybe performance related and hence help me decide?

Thanks

 

[datahell]

My personal opinion is that flash is only good for streaming FLV videos. Don't use flash.

AJAX is not a program or an application and therefore we can not tell if it is good or bad for SEO. The sure thing is that AJAX is a combination of javascript and XML and we know that javascript runs on the client's browser. So javascript/AJAX functionality will not work for the search engines (notice that I speak about functionality, the content it self might be available). Loosing functionality is not necessary a bad thing as AJAX is a trigger to show more information in a faster or eye catching way. Usually this information is also available in other (standard) forms too or visible in html source code.

For example take a look at the slider (module eTabs) at the elxis.org front-page. Although google and the other search engines can not slide the tabs they can read their content and follow the links as they are available on the source code. If you disable javascript the slider will stop working for the other tabs, besides the first one, but the layout will not break as the CSS controls the display. On the other hand if someone does not have flash installed he will see nothing.... Also AJAX runs in ALL modern browsers.

What I do not recommend is to built web sites that rely 100% on ajax.

So, to answer you question, Flash or AJAX: definitely AJAX!

[de-active]

Perfect! Just what I wanted to hear....AJAX it is then.

So would AJAX be correctly defined as a scripting language rather than a standard? I know it's not a program or application.

Further, I'd like to ask whether IOS Noobslide and Easy Image Gallery were programmed in AJAX.

Many thanks.

[datahell]

Yes and No.

They both use the mootools javascript library which is most oftenly used to provide AJAX functionality. But mootools is not just an AJAX library it is much more than this. Mootools re-writes the whole javascript and does not resides just in DOM (as jQuery does).

In strict terms, no, they are not AJAX applications as they do not fetch content that did not previously existed.
What they do is to present content alredy existing in the source code, or already linked (like the gallery images) in an eye-catching way. Some may call these AJAX applications but if we follow the strict terminology they are not. BTW, both of them are SEO fine and XHTML valid.

To better understand what is AJAX and what is not, AJAX powered applications are the publish/unpublish icons in Elxis administration area, the EDC installer, the Updiag tool, the logout window from the administration area, etc.