“Nick, could we use some AJAX to do XYZ?”
“Sure. Or we could just use J. It’s much quicker.”
AJAX = Asynchronous JavaScript and XML: To update a web page without reloading the whole page, use JavaScript to send an asynchronous background request to the server, get the data you want back as XML, then use JavaScript to parse this and update the appropriate bits of the page.
Only thing is, it’s much easier if you skip the whole XML bit and get the server to send back ready-made JavaScript. Take away the XML, and all you’ve got is AJ.
AJ = Aynchronous JavaScript: To update a web page without reloading the whole page, use JavaScript to send an asynchronous background request to the server, get the data you want back as JavaScript, then use JavaScript to evaluate this and update the appropriate bits of the page.
Only thing is, half the time we can skip the asynchronous background request and just load in all the data we need up front. Take away the asynchronous, and all you’ve got is J.
J = JavaScript: To update a web page without reloading the whole page, use JavaScript to update the appropriate bits of the page.
Now that’s much quicker. And that’s what a lot of people are doing. But everyone’s still calling it AJAX. A year or so ago we called it DHTML. Before that we called it JavaScript.
Funny how things come around.
