AJAX Tutorial
AJAX is becoming a hot topic in Web applications and it seems that every Web developer is talking about it or advocating it or criticizing it, or whatever. Some even refer it as “future of the Web”.
What in the world is AJAX then?
First of all, AJAX is NOT a language.
Secondly, AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It is just a technique, actually an old technique called remote scripting which allows client-side JavaScript to request data from a server without having to refresh the Web page. That’s pretty much it!
What really makes AJAX possible is the XmlHttpRequest object or its Microsoft’s ActiveX equivalent. It is this object that allows data to be transferred asynchronously. What asynchronous means that a process can be handled independently from other processes, for instance, in a Web application, some data can be retrieved and displayed without post-backs.
I will go through an example to explain how to implement AJAX in an ASP.NET Web application.