A Web that works
IDEA No 74
AJAX
Short for ‘asynchronous JavaScript and XML’, AJAX is a group of interrelated web-programming technologies that can send and retrieve data in the background, without having to reload the page.
In the early years of the Web, pages were built entirely in HTML. On each click, a new page was loaded. Even a small change to the page meant the entire page had to be refreshed. On the plus side, it was easy to create webpages; on the down side, it led to a stop-start user experience.
In 1999, Internet Explorer 5 introduced the XMLHttpRequest, using it to dynamically update the news stories on the MSN homepage. This functionality was soon adopted by all major browsers, and the Web made a gradual transition from static to ...
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