: Hi! I've heard about the ajax. I just wonder how can i put ajax on my page i am using asp classic. my friend told me that it is written in xml format but i dont have any idea on xml programming. I am interesting to learn this thing. thanks.
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I am no expert. I don't even know ASP. only JavaScript and HTML. XML is very much like HTML, but requires any HTML to be in specific format to be read (ie. all lower case tags). furthermore, XML is like a library to create HTML. In this way, XML views the HTML as a tree of so-called nodes, so programmers are aware of the entire mark-up at once, rather than having to filter through the text, splicing and concaterating through the document to find an element. XML DOM also stores each type of tag element into an array, which further simplifies things.
JavaScript is
not a add on. Every browser should be aware of it. JavaScript can modify HTML with XML objects or by name attributes of HTML tags, however given many inputs of the same type, text for example, you would have to give each a different name, whereas XML stores them all an an array. This proves useful when writing a script, because you can easily make reference to any active element, without having to give each element an event and pass its name, although at times it is necessary to find the type of data expected.
In essence AJAX would be a script, written in JavaScript that is very much DOM/XML aware, obviously, but there are further intricasies that make AJAX. The
script should be forward-looking. To explain this I must reiterrate that DOM/XML stores a markup that has already been written, (back-looking). You can add data and settings to the document markup with a cookie, but the cookie idea is still created then applied (back-looking). So, where does AJAX look? to the server, most likely. It should call on a script that will update data as the document loads, or, in the case of a text box, everytime a key is pressed, the script compares it to a database on the server... resulting in auto-completion, like an the address bar of your browser, sort of. The difference lies in the fact that the user doesn't ever have had to been to the site or entered a single letter into a text box before. The data doesn't come from the user computer. A stock market ticker, written in JavaScript, would also have to be written using AJAX, since it would need to get real time quotes from the server. It is this forward looking thinking that AJAX implies.
I wouldn't call this cutting edge or even say it is a particular break-through, yet someone thought it cunning enough to give it a board on this forum. That's just my 2 bits; look around on the web, you'll find it. Here are some starting places:
http://www.w3.org/ or
http://www.devguru.com/ or
http://www.google.com/
WHAT you;see_is_what=you.get;
-Russ aka DangeRuss
