The challenge for web developers is not merely to add AJAX to applications but rather to shorten the interaction loop that separates users from information - and the loop through which users travel when they enhance or share that information. That, in a nutshell, is the challenge facing developers today, said Eric Miraglia (pictured below speaking on SYS-CON.TV) from Yahoo! Presentation Platform Engineering at today's "Real-World AJAX" One-Day Seminar in San Jose, CA.

"AJAX, of course, helps us respond to that challenge in unprecedented ways because it marries the vast power of the server to a richly interactive client interface that can play in any modern browser on any OS platform," said Miraglia.

But we mustn't, he added, lose sight of the fact that AJAX is only useful insofar as we have smart ideas about how to apply it in improving the user's experience:

"Whether you choose any of the excellent commercial DHTML libraries (like Zimbra, Backbase, or Tibco) or a free alternative (like Prototype, Dojo, or the Yahoo User Interface Library), that fundamental challenge remains: Make the user's journey from idea to information (and back again) as light, as intuitive, and as rewarding as possible."

Miraglia concluded today's presentation by focusing on a single category of AJAX-empowered interaction: Filtering and suggestion based on users' interaction with a text entry field.

"Many granular interaction patterns grow from this category," he said, "among these, autocomplete, autosuggest, and livesearch have been described well in the design pattern literature." He gave those crowding the Almaden Ballroom at San Jose's Hilton Hotel to understand deeply this interaction category, the role AJAX plays within it, and the tools developers have at their disposal for using text-driven interactions to improve dramatically users' experience of applications.

The delegates attending left the session with some simple code patterns to speed implementation — including templates based on free libraries that they could take home with them and apply right away.