Ajax
Revision as of 11:50, 14 January 2014 by Michael Murtaugh (talk | contribs)
Term for a popular web programming paradigm, whereby Javascript is used to load data Asynchronously (that is, in the "background" while an existing page stays loaded). The word refers to "Asynchronous Javascript + XML". Though XML is the traditional response format, other data serialisation techniques are supported, including "lightweight" formats like JSON. The original technique was based on a Microsoft browser addition, the XMLHttpRequest object, that allowed Internet Explorer to load an XML document using HTTP directly from javascript.
Disambiguation: Ajax is also a popular Dutch football team, the brand name of devices used by Wile E. Coyote and a cleaning product.