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Rik Lomas shows you all the techniques you need to incorporate AJAX into your site and use the Google Maps API to best effect
Whoever would have thought that Microsoft could devise something that reignited interest in web development again and started a whole new wave of Web 2.0 sites? AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, is a technique (rather than a technology) that exchanges small amounts of data with servers that are working behind the scene. Basically it means that web pages don’t need to be reloaded for them to receive new data. AJAX relies heavily on the XMLHttpRequest object, originally a Microsoft ActiveX object, which is used for establishing a connection between the client side and the server side.
Despite the XMLHttpRequest object being around since the dotcom boom, it’s popularity has only increased recently with the explosion of the Web 2.0 movement. AJAX is now synonymous with Web 2.0, and any new Web 2.0 site is almost expected to have some sort of AJAX. Forerunners, which skyrocketed the popularity of these new methods, include Google Suggest (labs.google.com/suggest), Writely (www.writely.com) and Flickr (www.flickr.com), but possibly the most notable of the Web 2.0 movement was Google Maps (maps.google.co.uk).