AJAX Introduction

AJAX is a technology that can update parts of a web page without reloading the entire page.

What is AJAX?

AJAX = Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.

AJAX is a technology for creating fast, dynamic web pages.

AJAX enables web pages to update asynchronously by exchanging a small amount of data with the server in the background. This means that parts of a web page can be updated without reloading the entire page.

Traditional web pages (that do not use AJAX) must reload the entire page if they need to update content.

There are many application examples that use AJAX: Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, and Facebook.

How AJAX Works

AJAX is Based on Internet Standards

AJAX is based on internet standards and uses the following combination of technologies:

• XMLHttpRequest object (for asynchronous data exchange with the server)
• JavaScript/DOM (display/retrieve information)
• CSS (style the data)
• XML (commonly used as the format for data transfer)

AJAX applications are browser- and platform-independent!

Google Suggest

AJAX became popular with the release of Google Suggest in 2005.

Google SuggestAJAX is used to create highly dynamic web interfaces: when you type in Google's search box, JavaScript sends the characters to the server, and the server returns a list of suggestions.

Start Using AJAX Today

In our PHP tutorial, we will demonstrate how AJAX updates parts of a web page without reloading the entire page. We will use PHP to write the server scripts.

If you want to learn more about AJAX, please visit ourAJAX Tutorial。