What is Ajax

Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. Ajax is not a technology or a product , it is just a way to refer a set of existing standards used together for developing faster interfaces, improve the user experience and better response times. Ajax support for the most popular web browsers, which includes Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome etc. The public use of Ajax can be found worldwide such as Google Maps, Google Suggest, Live.com etc.

Ajax introduces a new approach to WebPages that update the portion of a the page by a techniques called Partial-page rendering. Partial-page rendering eliminate the traditional way of doing a full postback (full page refresh) to the web server and updates only the necessary portion of the web page. That is, only the necessary data is transferred back and forth between the client and the web server . Using this techniques you can cut down on the network load , bandwidth usage and moreover the web page is not locked during the server processing. It helps in creating faster, better, dynamic and interactive web applications.

Ajax is a combination of existing technologies such as XMLHttpRequest Object, JavaScript, DHTML, DOM and XML. XMLHttpRequest object is responsible for the partial updates of web pages by using JavaScript to make requests to the web server and process the response. XMLHTTP is a protocol that is designed to package data as XML and send it via the network to the web server.