HTML_AJAX

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What is AJAX

So what is this funny sounding term standing for? Asking the encyclopedia gives us some results:

• a military leader in Homer's "Iliad"
• a tragedy by Sophocles
• a well known soccer club from Amsterdam
• a name of a Dish Soap
• an all purpose cleanser
• a city in Ontario, Canada
• and last but not least the abbrevation for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML".

AJAX isn't a new technology, but it's a new name for a way of programming, using different technologies together. It's a combination of a normal interface using (X)HTML and CSS, dynamic elements and interaction via the DOM (Document Object Model), asynchronous data exchange using XMLHttpRequest. This all is fit together using JavaScript.

It's not necessary to use XML for data exchange. You can also use plain text, preformatted HTML or any other data format you can deal with. If you're using JavaScript in a web application to communicate with the server outside of the normal POST or GET flow, you're doing AJAX. The important thing isn't the specific set of technologies but the richer user experience created by the new development model.

AJAX is generally built on top of the XMLHttpRequest object. On IE it is a built in ActiveX object; in Firefox, Safari and most other browsers it's a native JavaScript object. This simple but powerful object has been implemented in enough browsers to become a standard tool.

If you use a library like HTML_AJAX to add AJAX support to your application you don't need to learn much about XMLHttpRequest, it will take care of the details for you. Even in this case you'll want a basic overview.

Using a different format breaks the acryonm, but don't let it bother the results are still considered to be AJAX. Common formats beside XML include plain html which is added to the current page using innerHTML and JSON which is a JavaScript notation that can be run through eval to turn it into native JavaScript types.

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