AJAX

      Sometimes you come across a situation where you have to create a website for a specific customer that requires a little more than just HTML and CSS. Let’s say that you wanted to create something like Google Maps and don’t want the user to wait forever for the page to load and the requests to come back from the server to take a lot of time.

      One of the many tools and perhaps one of the best is called AJAX, a tool that makes it easier and faster for the browser to render the web application.

      According to the website www.about.com, “the Ajax engine works within the Web browser (through JavaScript and the DOM) to render the Web application and handle any requests that the customer might have of the Web server. The beauty of it is that because the Ajax engine is handling the requests, it can hold most information in the engine itself, while allowing the interaction with the application and the customer to happen asynchronously and independently of any interaction with the server.” 

      With Ajax, the JavaScript that is loaded when the page loads handles most of the basic tasks such as data validation and manipulation, as well as display rendering, the Ajax engine handles without a trip to the server. At the same time that it is making display changes for the customer, it is sending data back and forth to the server. But the data transfer is not dependent upon actions of the customer. 

      If you’ve seen or used Google Maps and Gmail, you have experienced Ajax in first hand.

 

Tuesday, December 9, 2008 6:11 PM