There’s a new or, rather, old programming language.. wait.. language? Hrm.. mixture of concepts is more like it. Anyways, there’s this new way of doing things on the web. It’s called AJAX which is an acronym for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. Based on the XMLHttpRequest object, it allows a web programmer to transfer information between the server and the web browser without requiring a complete reload of the web page. Pretty nifty stuff.
Dubbed Web 2.0, this “new” technology is revolutionizing the way users interact with the web. More than a mere buzzword, AJAX is sweeping the web and offering up some very powerful web applications. Gmail has been using AJAX for a while now. AJAX, combined with DHTML, allows you to “build” your Google homepage, and allows that same page to be updated on the fly without reloading the entire page. More recently, sites such as Netvibes, Pageflakes, and Eskobo offer “Web Desktops”. Other sites such as Yahoo Maps and Google Local offer web based mapping software without the arrow clicking and page reloading.
I’ve purchased a book on AJAX to enhance my own knowledge of this powerful web development tool. It’s definitely an intruiging concept and it seems simple enough up front, but extremely powerful when you get deep into it. Stay tuned for more!!!