What is AJAX?
When I think about AJAX, it reminds me of late '90s. It was around 1998 when Microsoft introduced a new version of IE with a very cool ActiveX control. This control allowed Web developers to request a page from the server through JavaScript code. I can't begin to accurately express my feelings when it comes to new technologies, but I am like a kid in a candy store. All you hear is, "Wow! Can I have this?”, or "Wow! Can I try this?” This cool ActiveX control was like a new toy for me and my feelings were no different than the proverbial kid in a candy store. (By the way, I had similar feelings when I came across F# the other day.)
There was no acronym for this Cool New Thing yet. I still wonder how the Microsoft people missed that. Nevertheless, we had to call it something. Among developers, we just referred to it as XmlHttp Request Object as opposed to a HTTP Request made by the browser. It was much later (~2005) that the acronym AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML ) was used to for these kind of requests.
The ‘90s was also the decade which witnessed the Internet bubble. Technology companies of all sizes were rallying to produce the Next Big thing. While we Web developers were trying to keep up with all the new development tools so that we could help our companies to build the Next Big thing. In my opinion, one such tool was DHML - Dynamic HTML Object Model. With the power of JavaScript and DHTML we were able to provide for the first time a very rich and dynamic user experience over the Web for very complex (UI-intensive) applications.
Before I dive into AJAX.NET and where/how it fits into the SharePoint environment, let me share with you briefly how AJAX works. The following two figures highlight the difference between getting the static contents versus getting the content via AJAX.
Figure 1: Requesting static HTML page over the Internet from Web server.
Static HTML page has links to other pages on the Web. New page is requested by clicking on a link. The browser will transition to the new page and render HTML content for viewing.
Figure 2: Simplified version of requesting Web content via AJAX.
On the other hand, the DHTML page uses JavaScript and AJAX to render the page and request new content without transitioning to a new page, thus providing a better user experience.
I have also created a sample Web site with set of static pages and a set of dynamic pages. They can be found here.
Now I need to find Mr. Krooze. After all, it was his idea that initiated this blog series. I am anxious to see what he thinks. And I am confident that it will start a whole new set of discussion.
Useful links
Posted
Jun 17 2009, 05:30 PM
by
Muhammad Piracha