Blaxing = AJAX + Blogging
One person already beat me to the prototype, but not to the term.
Well, it seems someone beat me to the punch again. For the past month, I've been trying to create a prototype. Not because I don't know how, its because I haven't had the time. I've even created a term for it.
Blaxing is when you take an existing weblog and add AJAX to make it more interactive. The site above definitely has AJAX working, but I've been looking a bit further into the future and want to throw a couple ideas out there and possibly show some advantages/disadvantages about this particular type of site.
Blaxing components
When someone comes to a weblog, users notice the standard components on web sites: Calendar/Archive, etc... Based on those particular components, you could create the following:
- Calendar/Archive - If you click on a month/day/year, the content in the center changes.
- Article List - Similar to the menu on the left of the site, click on the item or article and the article is loaded into the center.
- Detail Post - Under the post details, the caption "Discussions" is displayed. When the user clicks on discussions, AJAX will pull back the entire list of posts dedicated to that article and scroll the list into the page
-OR-
A combo box that lets you select a discussion post with a next and previous post that uses AJAX to pull each article back.
Blaxing Advantages/Disadvantages
These are just a couple of ideas I've forseen in the future of blogging, BUT (there's always a but) there are disadvantages/advantages to having a site like this. Check this out:
- Advantages
- VERY techno-weenie, cutting-edge advanced web site. Geeks would travel from hundreds of miles just to visit your web site and the use of AJAX technology. :-)
- Disadvantages
- Search engines will suffer from Excedrin headache #45. It'll be hard to index fragments of pages and databases when you are only pulling back small pieces of XHTML.
- Don't expect people with JavaScript disabled to enjoy your web site. There ARE individuals out there who have security phobias and disable the JavaScript in their browser.
- Tracking users on your web site using server logs requires custom tracking. You think Excedrin #45 is bad, try tracking the path a visitor takes when using this type of site and determining what page called it.
With all of that said, does anybody have any ideas on this type of site structure? Is it really worth using this type of structure?
