What's AJAX?
People tell me that they just love my ajaxified site. I don’t get it. My understanding was that ajax stands for asynchronous javascript and xml and it allows you to communicate with the server without reloading the page. No where on my site is this technique ever used. Was my definition incorrect? If so, what is Ajax?
I see more and more people referring to libraries like moo.fx and scriptaculous as ajax. Granted scriptaculous does have some ajax controls but no one is ever actually talking about them. They’re talking about the drag and drop and sortable list effects. The moo.fx library by itself (meaning without moo.pack.js) does 3 things, changes the height, width, and opacity of an element. How is that ajax? I just think its fancy javascript.
posted Aug 27, 12:27 AM |
1 | On Aug 27, 10:08 AM Eric said...
To the best of my knowledge, your definition is 100% correct (though I believe the definition has been broadened to allow the Javascript to asynchronously load HTML or even plain text instead of XML and still qualify as AJAX).
It’s just a case of people hearing a buzz-word and not understanding it fully…
BTW, I just love your moo.fx-ified site. ;-)
4 | On Sep 12, 05:58 PM Toya said...
It’s possible, but seems highly unlikely. Usually people will say something to the effect of “I really like your ajax site and thanks for the moofx tutorials”.
The search is not the main purpose of the site and not something that’s heavily used so I wouldn’t say that because of it my site is ajax.
5 | On Sep 20, 11:15 AM matthew said...
I find that the term “ajax” has indeed been broadened to not only describe a technology (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), but to describe the very “feel” of a website. If a website “feels” like an application, as opposed to just a click-and-load website, then it is often described as Ajax (even if it niether uses javascript, nor XML, as mentioned above). Then again, people have been throwing around Web 2.0 like it means something _ I’m kinda sick of that as well….
6 | On Oct 4, 03:35 AM mer said...
Agree. Your definition is CORRECT, and I guess that people is running out of ideas on their desperate need of labelling things, like the web2.0 look or… the ajax (??!!) look..& feel.. & bullshiting… heavens! it’s just design!! I’ve just learnt last week what on earth was a “web2.0” design… and I’m a graduated graphic designer since 2001 and working on it since the beginning of my studies. But what I’ve learnt for sure is that people who don’t have any knowledge of graphic/web design, just become tongue-tied at the time of explaining how they want their desing look like, and they just follow the flow using words that ONLY them know what they mean, cause there’s not such a thing like a web2.0 design definition, so they make up in their minds their very own version.. and your task as a designer is.. to guess.
//sorry! I didn’t mean to write a book here!
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