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Making Ajax Request
Ajax Web Technology Explained Part 1

Introduction
This is part 1 of my article series, Ajax Web Technology Explained. It is a two part series.

When you click a link on a web page a new web page should normally be produced at your browser. Now this web page is sent from the server. There are times when you need just a peace of text from the server and not a whole web page. Traditionally a whole web page would be sent with the small peace of text, you need. However, if just the small peace of text is sent, the time taken will be small compared to when the whole page is sent.

Ajax is a new technology, that enables you pull a bit of info (text) from the server and not a whole page. In this way you obtain the text information faster, than if you where to obtain it with a whole web page. Ajax can still be used to obtain large text, which does not have the HTML tags that form a web page. Ajax can be used to obtain (download) what is called XML files, but we shall not look into the case of XML files in this article.

Example of Ajax Technology
www.google.com (Google Suggest) made Ajax popular in 2005. As you start typing letters in the Google Search box, Ajax at the client's browser sends the letters to the server, and the server returns a list of suggestions (words). You might have noticed this already, if you are used to the Internet.

What is Ajax?
Ajax is code that that web designer writes as he prepares his web page. AJAX is abbreviation for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. You do not need to understand all that vocabulary in order to understand Ajax or this article. In order to understand this article (that is, Ajax), you need to have basic knowledge in HTML, basic knowledge in JavaScript and JavaScript objects, and a notion of database. The Ajax code is written in JavaScript in an HTML document.

Ajax is used to retrieve data (text) by a page at the client's browser to fit into that same page at the client or used by JavaScript in that same page.

With Ajax, just the text is retrieve from the server; the HTML elements that would have been added to the text to form a web page are not transmitted with the text.

The Ajax process is initiated by the client (user on his web page at browser); the process is executed without the user knowing; it is generally fast, so the user does not notice that information has been got from a server residing in some other country.

Advantages of Ajax
Traditionally, to retrieve data from the server, you have to fill a web page form,

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