Essential Fluid

With 15 years of extensive marketing experience in Asia and Europe, Simon has an exceptionally diverse knowledge of the design and marketing industry. He is driven by a personal passion to help companies stand-out through maximizing their marketing potential and has worked with market leaders across a wide range of industries.

Helen helms all creative work at Fluid and hails from a varied and international background in design and interactive media backed by years of experience both locally and overseas. She has led some of the most innovative campaigns in the local market industry and is sought after for her extensive conceptual and design talent combined with her understanding of Chinese culture.

Scott's passion for interactive and digital media combined with his ability to offer innovative and practical solutions has propelled Fluid's interactive division to a level that has garnered high recognition in the industry. With over 13 years of interactive experience, he has worked on some of the most cutting-edge interactive projects in the industry.

This issue’s question:

Lately, I keep hearing about a new and amazing technology called ‘AJAX’. I always thought that AJAX was a powerful cleaning agent but soon realized that it had nothing to do with getting out dirt. What exactly is this new AJAX and why is there so much hype surrounding it?

Answer from scott de nino, fluid’s new media director:

A young grasshopper, you have much to learn.

AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. This process creates a more responsive and robust site. Incorporating this type of reaction from a website normally required a plug-in element such as Flash.

So what’s new? With AJAX you have a clean, sparkling and immediate response to your interaction from within a site. You now see graphics and content that slide across the screen; image galleries that fade in and fade out; content that can move around your screen and interact with other content. Why is this soooooo (note the extra o’s) amazing? Well this technology doesn’t need a plug-in, it’s free of the plug-in box and it’s completely cross-browser compatible. The reaction time to users is immediate and transparent. To see an example of this go to our real-time rate calculator for The Wall Street Journal Asia’s Media Guide -www.wsj-asia.com/
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What does this newfound freedom mean to sites? The aspect that I find exciting is layering of information. Allow for more content to become accessible to the user without crowding information into a web page. Hey Mr. Client you would like to have 14 features on the home page instead of the three you originally told me, no problem. I’ve got AJAX now. Set up a voting system where users can drag their favourite candidates to a container and have it react with new information on the page. Not a problem. All happening in real time.

The last aspect of AJAX that must be noted is that the technology is open source, meaning it’s free to everyone, and in the short time that it has been around some very amazing techniques have been created. Go forth and spread the word!

Have a design, marketing, or digital media query that has been on your mind? Our panel of experts are here to help. Simply email your question to enquiry@fluidhk.com and watch this spot!