Web technology keeps re-surfacing. Way, way back Microsoft added a feature
called XMLHTTP to
IE that went mostly ignored for a
long time. Specifically What XMLHTTP did was add
XMLHttpRequest() so as to allow
JavaScript to make a call
to a server and get results back without having to reload the page. It is
possible that it’s adoption was hampered by it’s IE only nature as well as the
prejudice against all things Microsoft
out there. As a work around you could fake some of this with a hidden IFrame.
Relatively recently Google brought out
the beta of Google
Suggest and tech heads went inexplicably apeshit.
Someone coined the cute acronym
AJAX and it was suddenly the new black. I suppose Ajax sounds better than
"JavaScript derived from Microsoft innovation".
Anyway, the folks that support Rails
have been
quick to
jump on the bandwagon and make it seem like
Ruby on Rails
is the be all and end all of Ajax applications. As a subset of OSS zealots these
guys really have it down to a science ๐ An
article appeared on /. and we are off to the races.
Interestingly of course this technology turns out to be deeply supported in a
automatic way in .NET 2.0. You can
download the tools
needed to learn .NET and work with the
coolness for free.
AJAX Support Libraries:
-
ASP.NET
2.0 Client-Side Features- Bring Server-Side Power to the Client – how to
use the built in .NET Ajax -
Ajax.NET – The free library for .NET (C#) – an alternative to the built
in Ajax technology in .NET 2.0 -
SAJAX – Simple Ajax Toolkit
by ModernMethod – XMLHTTPRequest Toolkit for PHP – mostly
PHP oriented -
Prototype- Object-Oriented
Javascript Library – influenced by Rails, but can be used with any
language -
DWR – Ajax and XMLHttpRequest
made easy – targeted at Java -
GhostWire Studios — Flash
Components — PHPObject – not Ajax, but a tool that allows
Flash to perform Ajax like tasks.
Tutorials and other information: