ebook
As the centerpiece of rich web application development, Ajax brings web
interfaces using XHTML and CSS up to desktop application interface
standards without the interfaces having to rely on plugins such as Flash or Java.
Prior to JavaScript-based server interactions, interfaces had to rely solely on fullpage
loading, regardless of how one might have hacked a page into appearing
otherwise.
Until Ajax development came along (which, incidentally, started in implementation
many years before the coining of the term itself ), client-side
development also had no thread support. Threading, in a nutshell, allows
the spawning of new lines of logic, completely independent of those before,
adjacent to, or after it. C, Java, Perl, and many other languages have had this
support for many years (in some cases) before client-side scripting came along
in any fashionable sense. The closest JavaScript had to offer came in the form
of the setTimeout and setInterval library functions, which required delayed,
seemingly parallel execution rather than the actual spawning of processes.
While Ajax still does not provide true threading, it does bring JavaScript one
step closer.
interfaces using XHTML and CSS up to desktop application interface
standards without the interfaces having to rely on plugins such as Flash or Java.
Prior to JavaScript-based server interactions, interfaces had to rely solely on fullpage
loading, regardless of how one might have hacked a page into appearing
otherwise.
Until Ajax development came along (which, incidentally, started in implementation
many years before the coining of the term itself ), client-side
development also had no thread support. Threading, in a nutshell, allows
the spawning of new lines of logic, completely independent of those before,
adjacent to, or after it. C, Java, Perl, and many other languages have had this
support for many years (in some cases) before client-side scripting came along
in any fashionable sense. The closest JavaScript had to offer came in the form
of the setTimeout and setInterval library functions, which required delayed,
seemingly parallel execution rather than the actual spawning of processes.
While Ajax still does not provide true threading, it does bring JavaScript one
step closer.
