You might have heard the phrase "Web 2.0". It seems to be tossed around quite a bit these days. Web 2.0 is a phrase that basically brings the web to the masses. It shows the web for more than just an "Information Highway"; Web 2.0 is all about user experiences.
Part of the user experience portion of Web 2.0-style websites is asynchronous pages. What this means is that your page doesn't refresh every time you click on something that should do an action within the page. For example, the comment box bellow doesn't cause a page refresh (known as a postback in the web development world) once you submit a comment. What it does is tells our blog's database "hey, here's a new comment". The database takes the comment while the comment is put on the page without the refresh.
This "no postback" idea is called AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. JavaScript is a language that was invented back in 2005 by Microsoft. One of the first web application to use AJAX was Microsoft's email web clients. The problem before they invented the idea of AJAX was that the page had to be constantly refreshed. I'm sure that it got a little cumbersome for a user to try to use Microsoft's webmail client.
At EagleEnvision.NeT, we openly use Microsoft ASP.NET (see my previous post). The ASP.NET team at Microsoft has come up with some really simple tools for AJAX. They have also provided great support for AJAX the way no other platform provider ever could do.
The problem with most AJAX applications is that they are HUGE downloads to your machine. Every time you ping a website, you have to download all the images, pages, and JavaScript code. When you have a large AJAX application that runs on one page, odds are that people will have to wait a long time to get onto your site.
Tip 1
Keep it simple! Large web applications tend to crash if you go too much.
Tip 2
Keep your JavaScript files small. No one likes downloading things that they don't use. Why should AJAX development be the same?
Tip 3
Know what your AJAX stuff does. If you don't know how your AJAX functionality works, bad things are BOUND to happen!
The point if for people to have a web experience. Crashing their browser doesn't make anyone happy!
There's a quick AJAX tour. EagleEnvision.NeT fully supports and programs in AJAX. Our sites (like, for example, the Zionsville Orchestra website) takes advantage of AJAX functionality.