AJAX: A Primer

First off, what is AJAX? AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. What does that mean? Basically, it means that you can call up other scripts and retrieve dynamically generated content (or perform simple actions) without ever leaving the current page. It’s how a large number of sites let you log in nowadays, and on what Yahoo! Mail Beta is based. It became popular through Google Suggest, where AJAX is the framework behind that little list that pops up below the search bar while you type in your query.