The Effects of the Ajax Technology on Web Application Usability

The Ajax technology is said to make the Internet faster, more interactive and user-friendly. It is spreading rapidly throughout the web. By allowing scripts being executed inside the user’s browser to communicate with a remote server, it enables new forms of interaction for web-pages and -applications. In this paper we analyze Ajax usability, taking into account both advantages and imposed problems. Subsequently we present a user study with two typical scenarios in web-applications and compare Ajax-enabled and non-Ajax-enabled versions. This allows us to verify and quantify the assumed effects. As a result, we show that Ajax significantly enhances both user satisfaction and efficiency of use, at least in some scenarios.