Blogger - Ajax - Comments Options

[kensplace]

Ajax comments for blogspot

Still not got my head around implications of ajax and SEO/Accessibility yet, but decent how-to for anyone who wants to have ajax'd comments on a blogspot blog

[IrishWonder]

Had a quick look at it without going into details - it is Javascript based isn't it? - Well, since it's applied to comments this could be a new (more effective?) link condom...

[kensplace]

Yes, Javascript at the client end, calling routines on googles server to retrieve the comments, which are then insterted into the original pages on the fly.

As it relies on the document being updated dynamically (insead of a new window opening for the comments, or the comments always been shown) its likely most search engines wont be able to index it properly so yes it may make a effective link condom

Guess it would take a test site to see how the likes of google cope (although, even if they dont do it today, there is no guarentee they may not be able to do it later)

Looks neat in use, but as with all ajax type stuff, probably a lot of issues with seo, and accessibility etc (unless its beneficial, as with the case with comments, to not have them easy to spider, but how would a screen reader cope with content being inserted into the dom on the fly?)

[Tim]

I haven't really looked into Ajax yet, so I might not be fully understanding this, but.. if a comment is submitted, the page is then alterted dynamically just once. Next time the page is loaded, the comment is intact in the page, because it was added to the database by the ajax routines.

Therefore, when the page is spidered, the comment will be picked up... right?

Or am I missing something?

[kensplace]

I haven't really looked into Ajax yet, so I might not be fully understanding this, but.. if a comment is submitted, the page is then alterted dynamically just once. Next time the page is loaded, the comment is intact in the page, because it was added to the database by the ajax routines.

Therefore, when the page is spidered, the comment will be picked up... right?

Or am I missing something?

The example in the tutorial is more for showing comments, so when the page loads you still see is the "x comments" link per post, but clicking that to view the comments does not load a new page, it dynamically fetches the comment from google, and inserts it right where you clicked.
As its done with javascript / xml / php or whatever (ajax) the page does not have to have all the comments pre-loaded (like some solutions which hide them in divs and just make the divs visible on demand).

Click the link, a request is made, comment sent back to the browser, the browsers javascript then inserts the comment onto the page.

Dont know if google can handle ajax when spidering.......

This post has been edited by kensplace: Feb 13 2006, 05:20 PM

[Tim]

Oh ok, I understand it now.

The best way to get around that would be to have the link actually going to a page that displays the comments, but having the link voided (using void 0 or return false;) by the JavaScript that runs when its clicked.