NYCPHP Meetup

[Dell Sala]

On a high traffic site, I supposed the lighter-weight processing and  
response of an ajax request could have a significant impact (although  
server-side caching would probably change that). But for the average  
site/webapp, I would question the assumption that ajax is in fact  
faster. Bandwidth, and server-side rendering of html is only a small  
part of the overhead that occurs with every request.

I would argue that the perceived speed increase is at least partly  
psychological. We are influenced by the fact that you don't get a  
subtle flicker with every page reload, or the "page loading"  
indicator isn't active. And if a specific request has the potential  
to be "slow", with ajax the developer has the opportunity to give  
feedback to the user in a controlled way instead of defaulting to the  
browser progress indicator. This kind of thing can make the  
application appear more responsive. I think small things like this  
can have a big impact on perceived seamlessness and speed of an  
application.

-- Dell