Ajax
- is not a programming language.
- is an approach to web interaction. This approach involves transmitting only a small amount of information to and from the server in order to give the user the most responsive experience possible, [1].
- is an approach for developing dynamic Web sites, [2].
- is not an acronym but in literature it can be in found also as AJAX, meaning Asynchronous JavaScript And XML.
- enables us to pass information between a Web browser and a Web server without refreshing the entire Web page, [2].
Ajax is a group of technologies working together:
For presentation:
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HyperText Markup Language (HTML) – content representation language.
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Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – provides stylistic formatting to XHTML.
For data display and interaction:
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Document Object Model (DOM) – necessary to change portions of an XHTML page without reloading it.
For data interchange:
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Extensible Markup Language (XML) – protocol used to transfer data back and forth betwen client and server.
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JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
For asynchronous communication:
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XMLHttpRequest Object (XHR)
Other technologies:
- Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) – content representation language.
- JavaScript – scripting language used to program an Ajax engine.
- Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) – transforms XML into XHTML (with CSS linked to it).
- RSS
- Atom.
Two different styles of Ajax, [2]:
- Partial-page rendering
- JSON service
Ajax Frameworks:
- ASP.NET is Microsoft’s Ajax Framework. ASP stands for Active Server Pages.
- Jboss RichFaces is a Framework for integrating Ajax capabilities into applications using JavaServer Faces (JSF).
Ajax example:
Google Suggest – as we type, Google Suggest requests suggestions from the server, showing us a drop-down list of search terms that we may be interested in.