In the past few months, the design pattern of combining Asynchronous
JavaScript and XML (AJAX) to develop highly interactive Web applications has
been growing in popularity. High-profile Web applications such as Google Maps
and A9 are currently leveraging the combination of these technologies to
produce rich client-side user experiences. The individual technologies that
compose AJAX are not recent developments; they have been around for some time
and have been continuously updated and improved. However, it is the recent
confluence of these technologies that is leading to interesting
possibilities.
I have three goals in this article. First, I want to provide a high-level
overview of AJAX-style applications. My second goal is to provide a detailed
description of asynchro... (more)