Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, Ajax, is the primary tool of interactive web applications today. Interestingly, it is less of a tool and more of an idea. You see, the raw JavaScript XMLHTTP Post tools have been around for over a decade in the Mozilla/Safari form of new XMLHttpRequest()
; and the Internet Explorer form of new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
;.
Once giants in the industry started using asynchronous requests to load data onto the page without a clunky HTTP refresh, it became industry standard and along with some transparency support in major browsers, helped to coin the somewhat dodgy term Web 2.0.
MooTools now brings us a cross-browser compliant method of implementing XMLHTTP Post operations without a lot of song and dance. In this chapter we will use the Ajax methods in the MooTool classes Request and JSON to accomplish:
Displaying local and remote web pages and web page data
Submitting forms and data and displaying...