AJAX: Asynchronous Javascript + XML

Posted 2005-02-27

An interesting overview from Jesse Garrett about the new wave of web applications, which are based on:

presentation using XHTML and CSS;
dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
and Javascript binding everything together.

I wondered several years ago whether Javascript was going to stealth its way past Perl, Python, Tcl, Ruby, and all the other "heavyweight" scripting languages. Still don't see any technical reason it couldn't, and would any of us really be surprised if it built up enough momentum in the browser to colonise other application areas as well? Who knows—maybe E4X will be the seed from which the extensible programming systems I've been dreaming of grow…