Programing with AJAX

Now a days web programing is getting more and more intractive Beside Macromedia developers are using something which dont require 3rd party s/w and if you're a web programmer you always keen to learn about these technology. Recently i was trying to understand Gmail, I was wondering how a new page is coming with actually refreshing the page, at the very next moment i thought its Google they might have written new webserver or something. But today when i saved that page using IE/FireFox i couldnt because i didnt really imagine these things. When i didnt understand what is happening, i start exploring Paul's Blog. He is gmail first official engineer, I was trying to understand the technical words. Suddenly i focused on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and when i explore this work at wiki, i thought thats it!! Google is using AJAX for its variouos applications like Gmail, orkut, Google Map ..etc! I played with it for few hours and i found it auit useful!

What is Ajax?
Ajax applications look almost as if they reside on the user's machine, rather than across the Internet on a server. The reason: pages get updated, not entirely refreshed.

“Every user action that normally would generate an HTTP request takes the form of a JavaScript call to the Ajax engine instead”, wrote Jesse James Garrett, in the essay that first defined the term. “Any response to a user action that doesn’t require a trip back to the server — such as simple data validation, editing data in memory, and even some navigation — the engine handles on its own. If the engine needs something from the server in order to respond — if it’s submitting data for processing, loading additional interface code, or retrieving new data — the engine makes those requests asynchronously, usually using XML, without stalling a user’s interaction with the application.”

Traditional web applications essentially submit forms, completed by a user, to a web server. The web server responds back by sending a new web page. Because the server must submit a new page each time, applications run more slowly and awkwardly than their native counterparts.

Ajax applications, on the other hand, can send requests to the web server to retrieve only the data that is needed, usually using SOAP or some other XML-based web services dialect. On the client, JavaScript processes the web server response. The result is a more responsive interface, since the amount of data interchanged between the web browser and web server is vastly reduced. Web server processing time is also saved, since much of it is done on the client.

If you want to explore more, visit : Visit here

If you dont know what we're talking about, visit:
http://niecdelhi.com/~deepak/newhome/ ( try to save this page and then view offline)

If you're quit interested in development using AJAX then have a look at various tools for various platoform.

Perl
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Catalyst A Perl-based framework with AJAX support
CGI::Ajax A Perl-specific system for writing AJAX or DHTML-based web applications

PHP
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HTML_Ajax PHP and JavaScript Ajax
XOAD (formerly NAJAX) PHP based AJAX/XAP object oriented framework.
xajax PHP Ajax toolkit
sajax Simple Ajax Toolkit by ModernMethod
pajax Pajax toolkit
flxajax Flexible Ajax (OOP available in PHP4 and PHP5 versions)

Python
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Myghty Myghty Ajax Toolkit
TurboGears TurboGears Framework

Ruby
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Og/Nitro
Ruby on Rails