Beginning ASP.NET MVC 1.0

Chapter 12. AJAX

Since the beginning, building Web applications has consisted of two aspects: server-side development and client-side development. The server-side development is the part that deals with dynamic execution of program logic on the server and returns the appropriate HTML code to clients. The client-side development is the part that deals with anything that happens in a user's browser, such as the generation of a user interface and any script that may run on a user's machine.

Two main processes are occurring on the client machine: rendering the markup code (HTML/XHTML/CSS) to present the Web page's user interface that is returned from the server, and the execution of client-side scripts such as JavaScript that enable some client-side logic and processes to happen. Usually, such JavaScript code helps to refine the user interface and to simplify user interactions.

As you already know, ASP.NET MVC is intended to be a server-side technology, providing great features for Web developers to build powerful applications. But client-side development is an integral aspect of development, and it has been shown to be of equal importance in the past few years. Therefore, the ASP.NET team has put a huge effort into enabling client-side integration of features and simplifying the process of client-side development in conjunction with ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC.

Besides the great features for Web standards and code markup integration that have been a part of ASP.NET since its infancy ...