The hottest topic these days on venture capital (VC) calendars and developer blogs is Ajax. Major ingredients of Ajax have been around for over a decade, so there really isn't much new to Ajax. However, the name Ajax,which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is pretty new; it was introduced in 2005 by Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path. Leaning heavily on Dynamic HTML (DHTML), Ajax tries to avoid round trips to the server. When an Ajax application updates some information, it does not replace the entire page in the Web browser. Instead, JavaScript code sends an XML request to the server, and at some later point replaces a selected subset of the DOM to update the current page.
If you're considering building an Ajax application of your own, you will inevitably need to consider the discussion points in this series. You'll learn about both the potential and the pitfalls inherent to this new technology. Note that this article is not for Ajax beginners; I don't really offer a tutorial in using XmlHTTPRequest, for instance. Rather, it's for those who are comfortable with the technical basics but are looking for some big-picture guidance on implementing Web sites using Ajax features. Resources has some pointers to introductory material on Ajax.
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