Ajax

Over the past few months there has been a buzz about the term AJAX. AJAX stands for Asynchronous Javascript And XML.

AJAX as a technology came into the spotlight mainly after Google (GMail) started using it. But AJAX is not a completely new technology, it's old technology with some new tricks to improve the interactiveness of the webpages.

One good news for coders is that you probably know most of the technologies behind building AJAX applications. Some of the technologies involved are HTML, Javascript, DOM, and XML. AJAX appliactions are much more responsive because they are able to send requests to the server without actually reloading the whole page. This is achieved by using the XMLHttpRequest object. The XMLHttpRequest Object enables us to bypass the normal request mechanism followed by the web pages (where the whole page actually reloads) . Instead this object along with Javascript makes it possible to send information to the server without actually refreshing the page, and thus improving interactiveness.

Even Microsoft has taken note of the huge popularity of AJAX and (as always) has planned to have "it's own" AJAX, which is to be integrated with ASP.Net soon.