ColourMod Is Not AJAX
Published by ColourMod November 14th, 2005 in Dashboard, Plug-N-Play, Konfabulator, ColourModAs I comb through referrers to see what people are saying about ColourMod, I’ve found one common mistake. ColourMod is not AJAX. I’m not the expert to describe the intricate workings of AJAX and other related concepts but I can say that ColourMod is not AJAX. AJAX, and other similar technologies, refer to the database (server-side) and user (client-side) interacting together. This results in a webpage “refreshing” with new content without the typical page reload. ColourMod is strictly done with Javascript (client-side scripting), the ‘J’ in AJAX and does not interact with a database whatsoever.
Sorry, but… it is, Adaptive Path just didn’t have their finger on the right definition, though they were onto something. The definition given by Paul Graham is a better one, to quote him:
“One ingredient of its meaning is certainly Ajax, which I can still only just bear to use without scare quotes. Basically, what “Ajax” means is “Javascript now works.” And that in turn means that web-based applications can now be made to work much more like desktop ones.”
And ColourMod is very much Javascript working, if you compare it to the flashing blobs following your mouse around which we got in Web 1.0.
Douglas
I beg to differ. AJAX, the acronym of a certain method of programming, stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. While much of this method uses XHTML, Javascript and modifying the DOM the final component refers to the XMLHttpRequest object that allows the exchange of data asynchronously with the server. So true AJAX is not AJAX without some kind of asynchronous interaction with a server. ColourMod does not do this.