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AJAX, acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a hot topic/technology in web development field. Ever since many web application going towards this approach (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo! Mail beta and other new application like Basecamp), it has been widely known and picked up by many web developers.

So, where did it start from? Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications — this is the first article named the acronym AJAX for using the combination of asynchronous JavaScript and exchange of data via XMLHttpRequest doing web development. The data being exchanged in between client and server not necessary has to be in XML format, but that’s the common approach most developers practice.

Why AJAX? In layman term, the web developers wish to achieve and providing a quick response and easy-to-use desktop like environment to web interface (that’s the web browser we stared at everyday). Traditional websites or any sort of web application would fully show its page as per requested once it loaded enough data from remote web server. That could mean a untolerable waiting while network is too slow. And it also cause some problem on the case where you’d some data verification from the server side — but it’d never get done until you fill up all the required data on one page. With AJAX, in between this page and the next page (well, also mean before you click the submit button), it already sending portion of data over to the server and did the necessary query or verification —- and even better, it shows the returned data on the spot!! So and so, this is more getting closer to the desktop application experience where the users familiar with.

AJAX is sure brought to be compared with technology also trying to achieve the same effect, like Macromedia Flash. One advantage it has over Flash is, there’s nothing new — it use the plain old JavaScript and XML, developers are familiar with it and search engine friendly. Of course, this isn’t a technie to replace what Flash could provide for the multimedia side of the effect. On the bad side of AJAX, sometimes it’d bring users believe they are using some sort of real desktop application and expecting a faster response. And it might break what the Back button do or slow down its effect.

In conclusion, AJAX looks like an exciting new technology/skill worth to invest to learn. So I went over to Amazon, it showed 4 books of my search result:

• Dave Crane’s AJAX in Action
• Foundations of Ajax from Apress
• Professional Ajax
• Ajax Patterns and Best Practices

The 3rd and 4th book would only be available in 2006. So right now we are only left with AJAX in Action and Foundations of AJAX if we tend to learn things from reading book.

Note: I joined Amazon Affiliate Program, if you interested, below is the books link.