Ajax in a Nutshell
If you haven’t heard about Ajax yet, you’ve missed out on a lot of hype and obfuscation. However, you’ve also missed out on some interesting paradigm shifts in the way people are thinking about web applications. (Google is using it extensively to drive Gmail and Google Maps, for example.)
Boiling it down to the essentials, Ajax is a set of techniques to do asynchronous requests in JavaScript and parse XML that comes back. When done correctly, this lets application designers toss out the pervasive refresh-page annoyances that come with traditional server-based web applications. You need only use Google Maps for a few seconds to see how nice this can be.
The dark side of Ajax is clear: You’re doing a bunch of JavaScript, with all the debugging nightmares and cross-browser issues that come with it. If this inherant flaw can be surmounted (and it can, with caveats), there are lots of interesting possibilities for improving web apps across the board.
There are tons of new sites and resources competing for your interest in Ajax, but there are a few good starting places worth a little browsing:
- A New Approach to Web Pages, Very Dynamic Web Interfaces: The first articles that really got Ajax discussion buzzing.
- Zuggest : An Ajax proof-of-concept that uses Amazon’s XML services to dynamically load content as you type.
- Wikipedia - AJAX: A good starting point for various Ajax resources, updated frequently.
- Ajax links in del.icio.us: The most popular Ajax sites, according to del.icio.us users.
- Technorati’s tag for Ajax: Realtime blogosphere on Ajax.
- JSUnit : Unit testing for JavaScript. My personal experience with the Ajax approach makes this a very necessary tool. There’s a lot of JavaScript to be wrangled, and good unit testing makes that easier.
