Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
Super Tuesday: Ajax Endorsements
Category: Fun
TechCrunch got political and got into the endorsement business, apparently based on their tech policy.
So, surely Ajaxian needs to get in on this action. How better to do so than take a look at what toolkits are used by the top runners:
Barack Obama
Barack is trying to be inclusive by weilding Prototype, Scriptaculous, and jQuery in the same page. This is a risky approach as it adds weight, and could pit the rivals against each other.
Hillary Clinton
Hillary has also gone for Prototype and is using Ben Nolan’s Behaviour library to add JavaScript unobtrusively, and is wrapping her Flash with SWFObject.
John McCain
This is a bit of a party foul. A view source on McCain’s website shows you Dreamweaver all over. There are more MM_* functions than you can swing a monkey at.
Mitt Romney
Mitt has gone for a different approach. He is hoping that an army of Mootools lovers will pull him through.
Conclusion
I will have to go for Barack with a slight edge. His website is very nicely designed, and I loved how it used to start off just with a video of his message.
What more do you need? Obama is the clear choice tomorrow, and this just seals it. :-)
Well, I can’t resist… Ron Paul’s web site is, like the candidate, better than the 4 mainstream candidates.
Have fun at the polls tomorrow.
I actually sent something to Ajaxian about Obama’s site a couple hours before this post went live. I feel like a jerk though. Prototype and script.aculo.us are actually commented out so it’s really a jQuery site. However you’ll notice there are some MM_’s in there. In the comments the web developer says “Yeah I know” and that he needs to get rid of them. I attempted to send him/her an email about how ridiculous it is to use all those frameworks and now I sit here w/ my foot in my mouth.
That “apparently” is the crunch. The author’s preference is pretty clear: believes that the government should run the economy because there are “monopolies” and little choice. Right, treat the consumer as a kid. His remarks on public schools are chilling.
Anyway, I like Dion’s way of selecting the candidate more. Do we know what frameworks or other tech the candidates are using?
JonBad, don’t feel too bad. There are probably pages that use jQuery and Prototype. I had a look with FireBug, take for example this:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/CP9N
I see jQuery, Yahoo, mootools and overlib.
The guy clearly has all bases covered…
From a performance point of view the site is horrible. I suppose all his voters have T1 lines or so.
Well in that case perhaps the “flip-flop” chant that was popular during the Bush-Kerry election should be resurrected for Obama’s site
16 script files on one page, 11 style sheets.. Power in numbers!
As per what other technologies they’re using, apparently Obama’s site is “Powered by Hope”, so that answers that question.
I’m not sure how it affects the Ajax lobby, but http://www.barackobama.com/ greets me with a 1995 style splash screen.
@Michael Mahemoff
Buddy, in what universe were you browsing websites in 1995? There’s nothing Web 1.0-ish at all about Obama’s splash screen.
@mdmadph
Except that there *is* a splash screen I think the OP means!
Nice to see a witty and not to serious post like this! Also it would seem that everyone round these parts gets along well, no flaming :)
I lurve AJAXian ^_^
Can we get back to a real blog with real usefull information or are we definitly stuck with crappy stuff like this “article” ? Who the hell care what is behind the website of thoses guys ?
They don’t have a clue, they don’t want to have a clue, they don’t need to have a clue, not the job they are working to get. So they paid a company to create the website, wow, what an usefull piece of information here.
The fact that they all hire some bad developers using bad libraries because they got bad advises is not really in their hands.
Please bring back the old Ajaxian, I am sick of the way you guys are going with all thoses useless articles !
Laurent, I think a look at these websites is enlightening. Remember 2004 were Howard Dean used the Internet to great effect? And here we are, four years later, and it looks like we made a step backward at least in the use of Internet technologies.
I agree on the “they don’t have a clue”, but they spend a billion dollars. So what does that money do? Is the Internet not useful as a political medium?
@Laurent - You sound very angry! Relax and enjoy the fun. Remember what that is?
Anyway, ill have to vote for Obama for the use of jQuery. Thanks for making my decision much easier, Ajaxian!
Actually as Dylan mentoned, Ron Paul has an incredibly clean site (look at the organized source! I’m generally an Obama fan myself…) Upon seeing Ron Paul’s site I wonder how much the design has to do with his double-record-breaking internet donations. Being able to easily navigate his positions and donate must have a serious impact.
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Although this may seem irrelevant to some (Laurent), part of being president is knowing how to hire people who can do things you can’t — and still have them done right. In that regard, they must have a clue — a representative (or company owner) has to know their target market and have an overall plan, even if others carry out the details. So, this is not an overall metric but an interesting insight into one aspect of how they may delegate and how accessible they will be to the public.
I’d say Prototype+Lowpro (instead of Behavior) would put Hillary in the lead.
You have to respect the effort to be unobstrusive.