A scouring cleanser with bleach.
Hmmm. I bet you mean the internet version of Ajax.
That is entirely different. AJAX is an acronym that stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. So, it is a programming language of sorts for the internet. In and of itself it is just a combination of existing technologies, but when put together allow for some neat things.
Ajax technique uses a combination of:
- XHTML (or HTML) and CSS for marking up and styling information.
- The Document Object Model manipulated through JavaScript to dynamically display and interact with the information presented
- The XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data asynchronously with the web server. In some Ajax frameworks and in some situations, an IFrame object is used instead of the XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data with the web server.
- XML is commonly used as the format for transfering data, although any format will work, including preformatted HTML, plain text, JSON and even EBML.
Ajax applications are largely executed on the user's computer; they can perform a number of tasks such as updating or deleting the records without their performance being limited by the need to fetch a full page of HTML each time a change is made. This permits the development of interactive applications, in particular rich graphic user interfaces using a full range of DHTML techniques. However it has drawbacks. One major complaint voiced against the use of Ajax in web applications is that it might easily break the expected behavior of the browser's back button, which find super annoying.
There's a lot of hype surrounding the latest Web development craze, Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), and a considerable amount of skepticism about its usefulness in the business realm. Surprisingly, although there is a lot of talk about what amazing things you can do with this approach, there is very little information about the applicability to business. There are quantifiable benefits to be realized for end users and businesses, which include improved usability and faster applications. These translate to hard cost savings that I'll explore in this article. It's important for developers to be able to explain the benefits of Ajax to other business stakeholders in these terms so that they are speaking the language of business, which is universally understood.
How Is Ajax Different?
For those who don't know, Ajax is a method of employing JavaScript, DHTML, and the XMLHttp behavior in the browser to provide truly dynamic content on a Web page without a page refresh. Popular examples of this technology include Google's Suggest, Amazon's Diamond Search tool, and many of Flickr.com's interactive features. Ajax effectively does away with the traditional "Click-and-Wait" Web-application architecture of yesterday, making it possible to provide the responsiveness and interactivity users expect from desktop applications. Ajax's ability to pull data from the server after the page has loaded contrasts with what we now refer to as the "traditional architecture." In a traditional architecture, the user must wait for the entire Web page to reload to see new results from the server. In an application that requires a lot of interactivity with the business layer sitting on the server, the user must reload the entire page many times.
This has implications for the efficiency of workflow, the load placed on the server hosting the application, and the productivity of users.