Something about AJAX --PHP

By: Darren Dunner

The asynchronous JavaScript and XML technology, simply called AJAX technology is one main technology that is playing a major part in Web 2.0 revolution. Web developers are facing a major challenge from several years. They are unable to change the information on a part of the web page with out actually reloading the whole web page. This has really been a big problem over the years and it largely irritates the users while doing small changes in the information on a given web page. AJAX has solved this problem up to a great extent.

With the help of AJAX, web programmers can make the web page to request web server to just change information which is on a part of the web page with out reloading the whole web page. In order to achieve this, SAJAX (Simple AJAX toolkit), which is a toolkit that is totally written in PHP programming language, has been introduced. This tool kit helps the web programmer to integrate the java Script with web server side PHP language. This will make the life of the web developer very easy.

But still, there are some down sides to this AJAX technology also just like with any other web technology, for that matter any technology. One of the major limitations of AJAX technology is related to the option of book marking. This limitation can create many hectic problems for the users of the web sites especially when the information requests to the web server are done through Post and Get methods. One another major limitation is related to the Back option on any web page. When a user presses on this option, this will take the user to first page rather than the last page which he viewed. This can surely surprise many web users who use extensively this option day in and day out.

AJAX technology can be easily used with many programming languages like java, PHP and so on. However, PHP is the most suitable web programming language to implement AJAX technology. Most of tool kits including SAJAX are also written in PHP. This should make the life of PHP programmers even easier.

GOOGLE is extensively using AJAX technology in many of its products, which includes GMail, Google Suggestions and so on. It is promoting this in a big way. So, if you are a web programmer, especially if you are a PHP developer then you should try and implement AJAX technology in your future projects to realize its real potential and power.

AJAX Technology

By: Anand Singh

Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It can send as well as receive information in a variety of formats, including XML, HTML including text files. To elaborate a little, it is a term used to describe client-server communication achieved without reloading the current page.

It was Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path who first coined the term “Ajax” in February of 2005, but AJAX technology is not entirely new. Several large companies including Google have created amazing applications using the AJAX technology. Google Maps, Google Gmail, and Google Suggest are all built using Ajax. Until recently, the technology was known as web remoting or remote scripting. What has changed recently is the inclusion of support for the XML http request object in the JavaScript runtimes of the mainstream browsers. The real magic is the result of the JavaScript technology's XML http request object.

Let us take a look at the actual use of AJAX Technology. Web pages designed using these technologies do not require to be refreshed to update the information on it. Instead, Ajax apps can simply update parts of the page at any time, giving users an instantaneous response to their inputs and queries. This allows users to continually see what they're working on and react to any changes, errors, or updates the interface notifies them of. Ajax is possible provided the two core technologies are present: A JavaScript-enabled browser that supports either XMLHTTP or XML http request objects or HTTP Server technology that can respond in XML

By allowing more sophisticated functionality using easier-to-implement web standards, Ajax is proving a real alternative for creating powerful web applications. These applications look and act very similar to traditional desktop applications without relying on plug-ins or browser-specific features

Some uses for AJAX technology are as follows:

Refreshing Data: Web pages often have data from a server for up-to-date details such as scores, stock quotes, weather, or application-specific data. A client may use AJAX techniques to get a set of current data without reloading a full page.

Form Data Validation: User IDs, serial numbers, postal codes, or even special coupon codes and other such data that has to be filled in forms require server-side validation. This can be validated even before the user submits the form.

Auto-filling: Data such as an email address, name, or city name can be automatically filled in a form.

Load on Demand: Based on a client event, an HTML page can fetch more data in the background, allowing the browser to load pages more quickly.

User interface controls and effects: Certain controls like menus, data tables, rich text editors, calendars allow better user interaction and interaction with HTML pages, generally without requiring the user to reload the page.

The importance and use of AJAX Technology, therefore, is quite clear. It has paced up things making them user friendly and easy.

AJAX Explained

by Adam Losier

I cannot express how much I really LOVE AJAX. I have been a web developer for the past 8 years and I have to say that microsoft's Asp.net 2.0 has made working with AJAX so much easier then what it used to be. For those unfamiliar with what AJAX stands for it means "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML", AJAX was officialy coined in febuary 2005 by Jesse James Garrett however there has always been various formats of AJAX like Microsofts Remote Scripting, commonly refered to as MSRS.

Basicly AJAX is a technique for creating interactive web applications, it is meant to increase a webpages interactivity, speed, and usability. AJAX has a couple of pros and cons, the pros are Bandwidth Utilization and Interactivity while the cons are usability (back buttons and bookmarks), search engine optomization, and responce-time. However in my opinion the responce-time is more of a pro then a con.

To really understand what AJAX is used for you need to understand the relationship between the Web Server and the Client Browser, but here is an example that any average joe can understand.

Bob lives in Canada (The Web Server) and he travels to France where he meets up with a friend (The Client Browser), Bob's friend asks him if he can show him a picture of his new car (This would be something like clicking on a button in internet explorer), if AJAX was not avalible Bob would have to go all the way back to Canada (Where the web server is) grab a picture of his car and then go all the way back to france to show his friend, but if AJAX was avalible in this scenerio then Bob would just simply reach into his pocket and show his friend the picture.

This scenerio is very basic and does not show the true power of AJAX, here is an example that will show you how much more important AJAX can be when building a webpage.

Sally visit's her favorite knowledge resource (Also known as Helium) and starts to write her very own article, the article she is writing has a limit of 1000 characters and everytime she types the specified number of characters decreases until she reachs the limit. If there was no AJAX present every single time Sally pressed a button on her keyboard the page would refresh (Press F5 to see what a refresh is) so that the numbers can decrease, however with AJAX everytime she types the numbers are automaticly decreased without a refresh.

As you can see from the above example without AJAX Sally would get very annoyed, very quickly because she would have to wait for the page to reload everytime she hits a button on the keyboard. This is the true power of AJAX and even though these examples are very basic in showing what AJAX can be used for, just know that without AJAX interactive webpages would be very difficult to make and you as the user would not get all the goodies you see on the web today.

For some examples of passionate writing styles and how easy it is to write your own short articles go to http://tinyurl.com/yc4aa3 and browse some of the articles by Adam Losier, he is passionate about the things he writes about and you can learn some good ideas from his work.