Probably most of us have heard about AJAX – the mystical acronym for rich and highly responsive web interfaces. Some people take it for just another media hype. I believe it is a revolution. And invite you to join in.
The advantages of AJAX-enabled applications to classic ones can be summarized as follows:
1. Better Performance and Efficiency – the key advantage of AJAX applications is the significantly higher performance, which is a result of the small amount of data transferred from the server. This makes the AJAX technique especially beneficial for data-intensive applications (e.g. displaying rich reports, browsing through large data structures) as well as for low-bandwidth networks.
2. More Responsive Interfaces – the improved performance leads to much more responsive interfaces, which create the illusion that updates are happening instantly. As a result the AJAX web applications appear to behave much like their desktop counterparts.
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Reduced or Eliminated “Waiting” Time – in AJAX-based applications only the relevant page elements are updates, with the rest of the page remaining unchanged. This approach eliminates the white screen (or page flicker on faster connections) and significantly decreases the idle waiting time.
4. Increased Usability – as the web application is more efficient through the use of AJAX, and the client can communicate with the server without page-loads, it becomes possible to build some wonderful user interfaces that fit much better with users’ needs and expectations.
5. Users Can Work with the Rest of the Page – many AJAX-based applications allow you to continue working with the rest of the page, while data is being transferred in the background. This further adds to the uninterrupted manner of the end-user experience. Some commercial components (like telerik r.a.d.callback) allow you to call a number of AJAX callbacks simultaneously
