Is there something like too much AJAX ? How do you handle screen resizing due to AJAX ?

Question

Q1: Is there something like too much ajax??

Explanation: I have been seeing programmers using Ajax/jQuery etc where I think its not even required. I had built a reporting tool for the company's senior management ( age group 55+) and had to refactor many pages and actually take out the ajaxy stuff from it. Are these things to be handled in requirements or are we looking at AJAX overkill?

---

Q2: How do you handle screen resizing??

Explanation: I have a page that has multi-level master detail functionality. You may call it a drilldown interface that also allows CRUD operations. I am using UpdatePanels in some cases. At times due to browser repainting the page the focus is lost. How do you handle something like that?

---

I can provide more details on Q2 if required.

Thanks

Answer 1

I think there is absolutely too much Ajax. A lot of developers don't realize that it is far from free. You are using a connection to the server, possibly establishing a new connection from scratch depending on server keep-alive settings.

If you are using a language like PHP on the server, it makes things far worse since PHP has to reload code from scratch for every connection.

As for losing focus on screen resize. Could you set a variable that records the current focus, then on window resize reset the focus?