Question

There are many ways to handle forms. one is to simply submit the form and the get variables on php and another one that i’m thinking of, is to send data with ajax and during this process we can show a dialog and show the information about processing the data with a progress bar.

despite the fact that ajax is faster than the standard technique and sometimes it’s easier to use why there’s a very few websites that are using the ajax method ?

Answer 1

Javascript, as a language, should be treated primarily as an ‘addon’. Your page should work perfectly without using Javascript, AJAX, or any other browser languages.

What should ideally happen, is when you Javascript loads, it puts in an event catcher that when the form is submitted, it returns false and instead submits it using AJAX. If Javascript is not enabled, nothing every submits false, and the form is submitted server side.

This allows the most compatability, and is the reason people discourage having a lot of Javascript in the actual tags like this:

Go

Some people turn off Javascript, and some old browser might have errors with that onClick event. Heck, people might develop new browsers that omit Javascript completely for one reason or another.

The Point is that Javascript should simply be an ‘addon’ to the web page, not the heart of it.
(Unless it is a Javascript Application, which does absolutely everything through Javascript. Normal forms however are not Javascript Applications)