This content was published by Andrew Tomazos and written by several hundred members of the former Internet Knowledge Base project.

AJAX

AJAX is a new term and stands for Asyncronous Javascript and XML.

Javascript was introduced by Netscape and has remained the most popular way of extending the abilities of HTML by embedding more complex functionality in the "XHTML program" that is sent by the web server to the web browser to control the end users computer.

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. is like XHTML but more general. In fact, XHTML is a subset of XML (an application of it).

Javascript can interact with XML on-the-fly making changes to it in reaction to user events. There is also some limited abilities to talk back to the server without a full-refresh of the page.

It begins to address some of the needs of making more complex interactive web software. An example of this on the cutting edge is Google Maps.

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