About AJAX

This is my first blog post so I decided to blog on a subject I investigated for an assignment as part of my Master’s course. The task was to do some research into an area of modern client server and e-commerce systems so for my research I decided to take a look at Ajax.  At the time I broke down my investigation into the the following topics:

1. What is Ajax,
2. What was the need for Ajax,
3. How does Ajax improve the user experience,
4. Ajax on the client,
5. Ajax server side,
6. Who is using Ajax,
7. Advantages of using Ajax,
8. Some issues with using Ajax.

For this first post I will take a look at exactly what is AJAX and where did the term come from.

1. What is Ajax?

Just about anyone who has been involved in developing web applications in recent years will have come across the term Ajax, but what is Ajax and what does is mean?

The term Ajax was first used by Jesse James Garrett (2005) in his essay “Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications” as shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. Garrett says it is not a technology but rather a combination of existing technologies used in a specific way to enhance the user experience of web applications. He also outlined the following technologies as components of Ajax:

• standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
• dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
• data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
• asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
• and JavaScript binding everything together.

All of these technologies already existed and were in use prior to Garrett’s article but he was the one who initially used the name Ajax.

Garrett suggested that there was a big gap between the user experience received when using desktop applications compared to web applications due to the way web applications interact with the server. I will have a look at the technologies and how they are used in later posts but in my next post I will first take a more detailed look at the difference in the user experience Garrett was talking about between desktop applications and web applications.

Next: 2. What was the need for Ajax?

REFERENCES:

Garrett, JJ 2005, ‘Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications’, Adaptive Path, viewed 24th May 2008,
<http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000385.php>