Xercel Blog

What is AJAX?

Ajax stands for Asynchronous Java Script and XML.

The term AJAX dates from 2005, but technologies that enable AJAX are dated sometime in the last decade.

Ajax is a technique that enables creation of interactive web applications. The goal of this technique is to increase speed and interactivity of a web page. The idea behind the technique is to exchange small amounts of data with the server, so that once user makes a change, there is no need to reload the whole pages, but only bits and pieces of it.

Ajax combines different tools to accomplish above stated. These tools are: XHTML (or HTML) and CSS, DOM (Document Object Model) accesses via JavaScript to dynamically represent information and XML.

Good thing about AJAX is good bandwidth utilization – since technique loads smaller bits of data, bandwidth is saved.

Some issues with AJAX are:

• Back button “not working” – page generated dynamically via AJAX does not register itself with the browser; hence “back” button will not work as with static pages.
• Dynamic page makes it more difficult for a user to bookmark it.
• Network latency – due to preloading of data, user may experience some delay in the interface of the web application.
• Search engine optimization – developers must have in mind that they need to present the same information to the search engine robots as they do to the users, as that is not always the case, because search engines do not execute java scripts.

More or less developers can resolve these issues, so desired functionality can be achieved at the end.

Posted at 01:00AM Jan 25, 2007 by Xercel Blog in General  |  Comments[0]