Ajax Part I: It's not just your Momma's kitchen soap.

If there is any such thing as glamorous or popular software; Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) would fall into that category. So let us break this down a bit. While the term AJAX was made popular in 2005, Asynchronous calls to HTML pages were first introduced in the mid-90s when Java revealed Java Applets. Contrary to the acronym's meaning, JavaScript and XML are not really required to utilize this technology.

OK, back to the mid-90s. True, it was possible to do background calls that only updated small parts of a single HTML page, but there was no standard. It wasn't until April of 2006 that a standard was recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). What does this mean? Well, there was a recommendation. Most will probably follow the W3C recommendation, but there will always be a few who would like to do something a little different. So, for the most part, Ajax can be implemented and recognized by most of the today's popular browsers without dealing with too many exceptions to the rule.

So if there is now a basic standard, what's the deal with not necessarily having to use JavaScript or XML. As it turns out other scripting languages like VBScript and Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) can be used instead. And in the case of the XML, some use JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), preformated HTML or just plain text. I guess AVAJ, AVAT, AEAP, or AEAJ just didn't sound as sexy as AJAX. So what have we learned here today. Hmmm, sexy sells software.