Computer Dictionary of Information Technology

Ajax

(Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) A collection of techniques for creating interactive web applications without having to reload the complete web page in response to each user input, thus making the interaction faster. AJAX typically uses the XMLHttpRequest browser object to exchange data asynchronously with the web server. Alternatively, an IFrame object or dynamically added <script> tags may be used instead of XMLHttpRequest.

Despite the name, Ajax can combine any browser scripting language (not just JavaScript) and any data representation (not just XML). Alternative data formats include HTML, plain text or JSON.

Several Ajax frameworks are now available to simplify Ajax development.