Introducing Ajax

[Tags: web design, new media]. This is worth brushing up on if you're interested in web design - Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) - from Wikipedia:

"a combination of:
XHTML (or HTML) and CSS for marking
up and styling information
The Document Object
Model manipulated through JavaScript to dynamically
display and interact with the information presented
The XMLHttpRequest object to
exchange data asynchronously with the web server. (XML is commonly used, although any
format will work, including preformatted HTML, plain text, JSON and even EBML). In some Ajax frameworks and
in some situations, an IFrame object is used instead of the XMLHttpRequest
object to exchange data with the web server. "

Also worth reading is 10 Places You Must Use Ajax by Alex Bosworth. In short:

• Form driven interaction.
• Deep hierarchical tree navigation.
• Rapid user-to-user communication.
• Voting, Yes/No boxes, Ratings submissions.
• Filtering and involved data manipulation.
• Commonly entered text hints/autocompletion.

Yes, that's right - there are only six...