Poking with ajax

I have played with Ajax before and even used it in a few projects, but never in a way that it was obvious.  With the next round of CADY site updates I have finally had a chance to put ajax to some real use. For the upcoming parent network, which is more or less a very simplified forum I am coding from scratch, I needed a simple and easy to use registration page for parents. Setting up a page is easy, making it point out peoples mistakes in a dynamic non refresh ways is not.

It is good HCI practice to limit any screen refreshes to just when locations are actually changing, it is what people expect. Where as if a user submit a form only to have it return and to say you missed something is not as intuitive, because the user has already moved on in their thought process.  This is where javascript and ajax usually come in.  By allowing the page to call remote content you can check form fields on changes and then update the user to missed fields or issues before they submit. You could extend the process and prevent even the submit if things are not correct, however this falls outside my current beliefs on how applications should handle user control.  If the user wants to submit the page with missing items even after being notified, let them, however have it fail the submit on the server side and then bring them back to the restored page with a notice of what they missed.  This forces the user to learn that finishing a form properly the first time is worth not having to remember what they where filling out.

You can check out the CADY Parent Network Registration Page to see my progress and fancy ajax trimmings, however please do not sign up unless you are actually a parent who is interested.