Friday, August 12th, 2005
Showcase: Blinklist
Category: Showcase
Blinklist is a nice small application that lets you manage lists of things.
They make heavy use of Ajax, and talk about how they embraced it:
Pagination with AJAX
Forget having to browse from page to page. With AJAX, new data can be sent between a users browser and a server, without having to do a complete reload of a users page. One of the best examples of AJAX on www.BlinkList.com is browsing through links. If you want to see the next page of search results, just click on the “>” (arrow) and you will see how the page is refreshed using AJAX. This makes browsing through search results faster and easier than before.
I have to say that this looks pretty cool too, but then again I just love cool technology. :-)
Selecting Favorites (starring links and tags)
One of the unique things about BlinkList, is the ability to mark (star) your favorite links and tags. Once again, we used AJAX to enable this feature. The benefit, users no longer have to click on a button such as “submit” to initiate and save the action. It all happens automatically.
Tag rename
We also allow users to rename their tags, incase they want to make changes. However, instead of having to send users to a different page, we can simply enable and bring up this feature via AJAX.
Copy, edit, and deleting links
The benefit of using Ajax to enable these features are the same that as above. The complexity is hidden from the user. To them, the act of copying, editing, or deleting links is just seamless.
Commenting on links
One of the new areas we are working on is allow users to comment on links. Once again, we are using AJAX to enable this.
does that site work, every time I try to go to the url it fails
Yes, technology and implementation is definitely cool. But, it really breaks my back button and I don’t see how useful it can be if you are used to Alt-left-arrow (and Alt-right-arrow when pages are appropriately made) stuff :-)