Thomas Fuchs of Script.aculo.us: Ajaxian Podcast

Ajaxian has posted a podcast of their interview with Thomas Fuchs, the creator of Script.aculo.us. Ajaxian summarizes the content that is discussed:

• How script.acuo.us was born out of a real project
• Why Rails was chosen for Fluxiom
• Where Rails shines with Ajax
• The new RJS templates feature that makes Ajax even easier
• The difference between Prototype and Script.aculo.us
• How Script.aculo.us is available in Rails 1.0
• Future plans for Script.aculo.us
• When you should use the cool effects, and when you should not
• About drag and drop and web usability
• Challenges that Thomas has faced with his Ajax projects
• Why you would choose an Ajax application versus using other technologies such as Flash
• How hard it is to build a very rich Ajax application
• How to handle browser differences
• Experiences with DOM manipulation and innerHTML
• How naming collisions are not as much of an issue in recent builds of Prototype

Here’s two tidbits of information that I’ll share with you that really stood out for me:

• Fuchs summed up the reason for using Ajax over Flash nicely. Flash isn’t for developers…(and I hold that Flash isn’t very maintainable)
• XML wrappers for objects passed from the server via Ajax is MUCH slower than simply passing JSON. It seems Zimbra has actially completely re-architected their product to utilize JSON over XML wrappers solely based on parsing performance! Regarding the use of XML wrappers, Fuchs says: “…its dog slow. Don’t do it.”

Its good to see someone whose work I respect have the same opinions as myself. Makes me feel like I’m doing something right.

Here’s the podcast.