A question – what do Deferreds, Promises, and /ˈeɪdʒæks/ have in common?
The answer is simple – for at least two of them; they are utilities that work with AJAX; the third is actually the International Phonetic spelling of AJAX.
Throughout the history of the Internet, we as end users were forced to endure page refreshes – you had to force a page refresh to show new content. Not so now – we can refresh content without needing to clear the page, using the power of AJAX, but not without its issues. Enter Deferreds and Promises – not for beginners, but a useful tool once you understand how it works!
Over the next few pages, we'll look at a number of topics relating to the use of AJAX with jQuery. These would include:
Detailing AJAX best practices
Improving the speed of loading data with static sites
Using callbacks to handle multiple AJAX requests
Enhancing your code with jQuery Deferreds and Promises
Seeing Deferreds and Promises in action
Let's get stuck in…!