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AJAX

From Zeroasterisk

Web Development: PHP ASP RoR AJAX RegExp CSS JS tools scripts

Template:Technologies header Ajax, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.

The Ajax technique uses a combination of:

XHTML (or HTML) and CSS, for marking up and styling information.
The DOM accessed with a client-side scripting language, especially ECMAScript implementations such as JavaScript and JScript, to dynamically display and interact with the information presented.
The XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data asynchronously with the web server. In some Ajax frameworks and in certain situations, an IFrame object is used instead of the XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data with the web server.
XML is sometimes used as the format for transferring data between the server and client, although any format will work, including preformatted HTML, plain text, JSON and even EBML. These files may be created dynamically by some form of server-side scripting.

Like DHTML, LAMP and SPA, Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies together.

1 Prebuilt AJAX toolsets
2 Prebuilt Specific Functionality
- 2.1 Autocomplete
3 Information
- 3.1 prototype information
- 3.2 other

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Prebuilt AJAX toolsets

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prototype

Prototype is one of the best (and best known) libraries which really extend JS functionalities and simplify the use of Object Oriented programming in Javascript... it also significantly simplifies the use of AJAX xhttp requests as well as some of the effects often associated with AJAX (though other tools are better at that)

official site
prototype-1.4.0.js (JS only... this is all that's really needed)
prototype-1.4.0.tar.gz

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rico

rico is based on the prototype library, you must have both and call prototype first. rico provides: AJAX Support (simplified), a Drag And Drop framework, Cinematic Effects, Behaviors... etc. rico is simpler and smaller than script.aculo.us, but not as feature-full.

openrico.org (official site)

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script.aculo.us

rico is based on the prototype library, you must have both and call prototype first. script.aculo.us provides you with easy-to-use, cross-browser user interface JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly. it provides: animation framework, drag and drop, Ajax controls, DOM utilities, and unit testing.

script.aculo.us (official site)
list of sites which use it

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yui

A bit weighty, but feature ful, with very clean and effective built in widgets to generate floating panels with controls, JS calendar APIs, and several other JS/CSS tools - in addition to data requests.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui

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dojo

Similar to yui, but a little more re-packageable and perhaps simpler, dojo contains many widgets and clientside-cacheing tools in addition to basic data requests... there are also very slick UI tools included as well.