Ajax

Every once in a while, I give Javascript its due credit. I have mentioned my reservations about javascript before so I’m not going into it now. This morning I was reading about Ajax and I must say that I was getting excited. Essentially Ajax is what some people are calling the use of Asynchronous Javascript and XML — which simply put is a way to create a more responsive user interface for web applications.

Currently, any time that I want to provide some sort of processing for my web applications I am required to load a new page from the server. This action provides a break in the interface — even with a fast connection, the page needs to redraw at the very least. Using an XMLHttpRequest, a request is made in the background while you continue to use the page and data can be returned and content or other aspects of the current page can be modified using the Document Object Model.

My usual caveat of making sure that any validations you think are done using this manner be redone when the page is finally submitted stands here. I know that I will likely be using this for a couple of things on my website — at least on the administrative side.