Anyone who has been following web technology the last couple of years has had to have heard or used the term AJAX that stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Jesse James Garrett coined the term in 2005, but the technology has been around long before that. AJAX has been so popular that there have been conventions and trade shows focused around the topic.
Within the past two years, developers have grabbed the technology with open arms. Developers are not only utilizing the technology but also making it more effective by creating tools for other developers. A common example of this is the Prototype JavaScript library, which I have written about, in previous posts.
For the most part AJAX takes place on the client-side of technology where the browser handles all of the JavaScript and sends and receives requests via the server through XML. AJAX has helped reduce the load on a server by only fetching parts of pages as opposed to entire pages.
Not only has it been able to reduce bandwidth, but also AJAX allows the application to be more real-time and interactive with the user. Instead of navigating the web from one page to another to another, AJAX helps to build small applications within a single page.
The use have AJAX has only just begun. As Web 2.0 develops over the course of the next few years AJAX will have a key role in many of the web applications. The possibilities virtually endless and from some of the existing applications recently released we can look forward to some great web based applications in the future.
