AJAX discussion

AJAX uses javascript and hidden frames to dynamicly change the content of the web page.
Or you can be cool like me and go more advanced. .net

Hidden frames???? Where would you get that idea from????

AJAX is short for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML - the technology also relies on standards compliant mark-up, DOM, and XMLhttp-request. You'll also see this term thrown around with Web 2.0 - which describes a turn in web development to more interactive and community based models that often use AJAX. Examples of sites that use AJAX are Flickr, Google maps, Gmail, and vBulletin 3.5 (coming soon to a forum near you ) The one bit bja got right is that it does change content and functionality on the page WITHOUT having to do a page refresh. So in vBulletin 3.5 I would be able to edit this post without having to load a separate page and then save and load another page to go back to the main thread.

Here's an introductory article written by the guys who came up with the acronym (which I have yet to read myself! It's on the "to read" pile )

http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php

I thnk it's interesting to think about the way the web is going in this context. I personally don't like the term "web 2.0" - it seems to imply that web 1.0 is outdated and will be replaced by more interactive models which I don't think is true or deireable. At the same time it's an interesting development. A lot of people are jumping on the bandwagon and touting on about how great this is and how it's the way of the future. And AJAX is really cool when you see it in action! I'm just not sure that it's as big a deal as people make it out to be sometimes. There are a lot of great applications already built using AJAX, and many more possibilities of course. I'm just not sure that everyone really wants to get into collaboration and personalization as much as some people think they will. I mean, many of us just want to get in, get the information we need, and go do something else! And the "coolness" of the technology will get stale eventually, like everything does.

Oh, and AJAX really has nothing to do with .net either - not even remotely comparable. Jeeves can tell you more about that !

I plan on checking out what .net has to offer... Haven't looked that deep yet.

Errr, well .NET is server side whereas AJAX is - not only a type of bleach in this country - client side, ergo the two may work together but are not the same or in competition with each.

I'm really not sure what all the fuss is about, that site you've got a link to demonhale is not an "AJAX" site, that being a misnomer. It might use AJAX but in 5 minutes of messing around I have seen nothing that indicates it is, it's using a load of Javascript, but that's not the same thing!

AJAX is being able to send and recieve data to/from a server without having to do a refresh of the page. This uses Javascript (although not from any particular standard, this is about as close as the W3C have got: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-LS-20040407/) that throws data in the form of XML to the server, that throws data back in the form of XML.

ASP and then a .NET application would be on the server side of this equation, AJAX on the client-side.

We shall continue the ajax.net debate in a new thread I will be starting shortly about visual web developer 2005

Why is that jeeves? I found that link to an actual Ajax developer site as an example, but then again Im new at this, I may have even been using and making AJAX sites even though I dont know it was AJAX...

Sites that use AJAX:

maps.google.com
mail.google.com
gtraffic.info

Read Megans post its listed there already, thanks for the links anyways...

bja888 wrote: We shall continue the ajax.net debate in a new thread I will be starting shortly about visual web developer 2005

As my ex said (I thought this was hilarious btw):

Quote: We're not arguing, I'm right.

There is no debate to have: AJAX and .NET are completely different things. Also any debate about AJAX that needs to be done will happen in this thread.

demonhale wrote: Why is that jeeves? I found that link to an actual Ajax developer site as an example

Oh, I don't doubt that there's AJAX in there, what I wanted to point out is that everything I tried in my 5 minute visit there didn't need to use AJAX, I edited some stuff on a page but as I wasn't signed-in it didn't need to save what I'd done back to a database. Everything else (background images and such) could have been loaded by using standard Javascript, or with the page call.

Remember a couple of years ago when XML first became fashionable? Suddenly everyone was touting it as the answer to everything, and exactly the same thing's happening here with AJAX. This is not some magical, catch-all, save the web, technology. It's a very specific bit of functionality that allows the browser to send and recieve data to the web server without loading the whole page.

Nothing more, nothing less.

I'd like to learn AJAX, but as with many things, I would like to start with simple ideas that can be quickly put into a production environment. Jeeves (or whoever can answer), do you know of any simple examples?

In other words, I understand that the more complicated AJAX examples are updating information without page refreshes, but am wondering if there's something simpler like rotating banner ads or something that I can use to learn.

I know Sitepoint had a tutorial on Ajax not too long ago. I think it would be a neat thing to learn although I don't know how useful it would be for people like us i.e. people who don't do more high level application development or things like that. For static websites there are many more important things to work on.

demonhale - I'm pretty sure you'd know it if you were using Ajax!

Now I do know, and I will try just to study about this just incase I need it in the future...