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Adding Ajax
book

Adding Ajax

by Shelley Powers
June 2007
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
400 pages
9h 52m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Adding Ajax

Preface

Ajax: It is part revolution, part evolution, and some would say all hype. Ajax is an umbrella term used to encompass a set of technologies including:

  • Markup, such as HTML, XHTML, XML, and SVG

  • JavaScript

  • CSS and XSLT

  • Last but not least, browser objects, including the canvas object and the object that really makes Ajax, XMLHttpRequest

Despite all of the recent interest, most of these technologies have been around for about a decade. Why the interest now?

Ajax is more than just a set of technologies—it's also a determination to take web pages and applications in new directions. We've had this determination in the past, but we never had the tools with which to build these applications. Now, the specifications that were all new ten years ago have reached maturity, and, even more importantly, have broad support in web browsers. New specifications continue to appear, and tool makers cooperate much more than they did a few years ago.

Years ago when web developers made first tentative motions to add interactivity to web pages, we were constrained by browsers that supported completely different models, and at times, even different scripting languages. The use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as a uniform way of adding presentation to a page was hampered by differing interpretations, not to mention proprietary extensions.

Now, CSS has almost universal support, and though there are still "quirks" in the system, most browsers support most of the specifications, and we're at a stage where what ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596529369Supplemental ContentErrata Page