Ajax: Breaking New Ground with Existing Technology
Leave it to the people at Google to figure out how to use existing technology, provided by Microsoft, to create a brand new user experience on the web! Experiences people thought weren't really possible on the web are now popping up in several new applications. Several weeks ago I posted about Google's new Map service, and last year some of us at Vertigo started using Google Suggest. Go to Google Maps, zoom in on a map, then grab the map with your cursor and move it around. The map moves instantly with no waiting for the entire page to reload.
The developers at Google are using what people are calling 'Ajax.' Jesse James Garrett at Adaptive Path consulting in San Francisco explains it this way in his blog:
“Google Suggest and Google Maps are two examples of a new approach to web applications that we at Adaptive Path have been calling Ajax. The name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, and it represents a fundamental shift in what’s possible on the Web.“
Basically Ajax is about using Javascript and the XmlHttpRequest object to do processing on the server after the page loads on the client. You can read about the process in this article. The Ta-da Lists application, which commits user data to the server in the background to provide a really fast list managing interface, also uses this technique as does Flickr. Here is a simple diagram of the concept.
The possibilities with this are potentially amazing. “The real challenge here is not figuring out how to make the code work but thinking of interesting ways in which it can be utilized.“
It's about being smarter with what we already have available to us.