oh internet

Old technologies for Web 2.0

Summary

Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Asynchronous roughly means "independent", though it does not necessarily have to be asynchronous. Ajax is not a language, but a group of methods, involving HTML, JavaScript, DOM, ASP, PHP, CSS, XML, and XSLT, that can be used to update parts of a webpage without reloading the entire page. This is helpful for event-driven design and is widely used by fancy, cute "Web 2.0" sites.

The XMLHttpRequest object is central to Ajax, though there are other options, and it can return JSON, plain text, a Javascript variable, along with XML.

Ajax steps example

• Something happens in your browser (event)...
• Call Javascript function
  • Create XMLHttpRequest object
  • Send HttpRequest

• Server processes HTTPRequest
• Server creates response and returns data

• Callback function
  • Returned data is processed
• Update appears on the porn site in your browser

Origins

Though a similar object was created earlier by Microsoft, Mozilla released the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript object in 2000. This is the current de facto standard for Ajax.

Current status

Active. Not going away soon.

Facts

Related Pages

HTML

PHP

External Links

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