DWR/Ajax
A new acronym came into my vocabulary: Ajax. The name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. Ajax describes the technology behind many of Googles’ web apps, in which data on the web page is updated without having to submit/refresh the whole page. From the article, Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications, by Jesse James Garrett:
Ajax incorporates:
- standards-based 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’m currently implementing Ajax functionality in my projects, thanks to dwr (direct web remoting). dwr is pretty easy to implement - kudos to the fellas working on it. Right now I’m simply using dwr to help check if the user has entered an id that already exists the the database; however, I’m planning to use dwr to make long, complex forms alot easier (and fault-tolerant). This is a really nice item to add to a web developer’s toolkit!
