What is AJAX?

Posted on: 08 May, 2009

AJAX is yet another web acronym. This one stands for Asynchronous Javascript And XML. An acronym in an acronym! XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. What a mouthful!

What all of these long words refer to is the process whereby information is drawn from an external source and then placed into a web page without that page having to be reloaded. It is possible for this process to take place without actually using any of the technologies mentioned in the original acronym. When people refer to Ajax what they are really talking about is the process, not the technology used.

Ajax is often used in the creation of web based applications. A good example would be Google Mail. When you log in to your Gmail, you can browse through your messages, send email, delete and re-order things without having to load a new web page. That’s Ajax in action!

For more detailed information check this page on Wikipedia.