The past few sessions at my internship have involved me gaining a crash course introduction to AJAX, otherwise known as Asynchronous Java and Xml. The Asynchronous part is what distinguishes AJAX from normal javascript that we’ve had for years. Instead of having the entire page update and refresh each time an action is taken, such as pressing a button, you can set only a portion of the page to refresh, such as a few objects that are relevant to the button’s action.
This technology can be paired with several scripting languages, including asp.net and php. It is one of the driving forces behind every “Web 2.0″ application such as Google Docs.
So far I’ve got a pinging animation going so that you can ping a specified hostname from your web browser. Though this is relatively “Hello World” level I’m going to be working on some more sophisticated applications next.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:59 am
Oh good. So you’re going to maintain the Culturally Appropriate Materials plug in then?
Next you must learn AHAH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahah