Archive for November, 2008
AJAX stands for Asynchronous Java Script and Extended Markup Language. It is an aggregation of various web development techniques to create an interactive web site.The word AJAX was discovered in 2005 but the research work was occurring on this technology since 1996 when IFrame element was introduced in internet. In 1997 the evolution of Remote scripting provides a base for the invention of this technique.By means of Ajax technology the data is retrieved by the web applications from the webserver without causing any effect on the appearance and behavior of the existing page as the process runs in the background.
ajax-a-web-development-technique
The various techniques which on combination resulting in Ajax technology are:
Cascaded Style Sheets and XHTML for website presentation.
The Dynamic Object Model(DOM) for data interaction.
The XMLhttp request protocol for communication.
XSLT and XML for data Manipulation and Interchange
Java Script to bundle all these technologies.
Important Points About AJAX techniques
The Java script is not the solitaire technology to aggregate all the technologies VB script can also do the same purpose.
Instead of XSLT and XML you can also use plain text and Java Script Object Notation technique for data manipulation.
IFrame can also serve as a means of asynchronous communication.
Advantages of Using AJAX
Sometimes a web page contains a very large content. By using conventional methods of content retreival each request is need to be reloaded but AJAX technology provides the power to directly target the content that needs updation.
AJAX technology provides the mechanism to the web applications to respone rapidly at a request. The user always receive fast response no matter the updation is done at the server side or not.
This technology reduces the traffic congestion as the style sheets are used in this technology which needs to be requested only once.
Disadvantages of AJAX
The webpages using Ajax technology are not attached to the browser history engine. So if by some reasons the page gets enabled then we cannot go back to the previous page with the help of back button, rather we reach to a page which was visited before it.
The making of a bookmark for a particular site becomes difficult.