Technologies

Web 2.0 / Ajax

O'Reilly media coined the term Web 2.0 in 2003. It is not so much a discussion of technology as a way the technology is implemented. Web 2.0 places the emphasis on social networking, wikis and other hosted services.

The term Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. Ajax is asynchronous in that loading does not interfere with normal web page loading. JavaScript is the programming language in which Ajax function calls are made. Data retrieved using this technique is commonly formatted using XML, as reflected in the naming of the XMLHttpRequest object from which Ajax is derived.

The benefit of Ajax is that since it is asynchronous, it does not interfere with page loading. JavaScript makes the calls using the XMLHttpRequest object and the data formatted in XML is sent or retrieved. Then JavaScript manipulates the DOM as needed.