Book Image

Learning jQuery, Third Edition

Book Image

Learning jQuery, Third Edition

Overview of this book

To build interesting, interactive sites, developers are turning to JavaScript libraries such as jQuery to automate common tasks and simplify complicated ones. Because many web developers have more experience with HTML and CSS than with JavaScript, the library's design lends itself to a quick start for designers with little programming experience. Experienced programmers will also be aided by its conceptual consistency.Learning jQuery Third Edition is revised and updated for version 1.6 of jQuery. You will learn the basics of jQuery for adding interactions and animations to your pages. Even if previous attempts at writing JavaScript have left you baffled, this book will guide you past the pitfalls associated with AJAX, events, effects, and advanced JavaScript language features.Starting with an introduction to jQuery, you will first be shown how to write a functioning jQuery program in just three lines of code. Learn how to add impact to your actions through a set of simple visual effects and to create, copy, reassemble, and embellish content using jQuery's DOM modification methods. The book will step you through many detailed, real-world examples, and even equip you to extend the jQuery library itself with your own plug-ins.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Learning jQuery Third Edition
Credits
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 6. Sending Data with Ajax

The term Ajax was coined by Jesse James Garrett in 2005 as an acronym standing for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Since then it has come to represent many different things, as the term encompasses a group of related capabilities and techniques. At its most basic level, an Ajax solution includes the following technologies:

  • JavaScript, to capture interactions with the user or other browser-related events

  • The XMLHttpRequest object, which allows requests to be made to the server without interrupting other browser tasks

  • A file on the server, presenting text in a data format such as XML, HTML, or JSON

  • More JavaScript, to interpret the data from the server and present it on the page

Ajax has been hailed as the savior of the web landscape, transforming static web pages into interactive web applications. Many frameworks have sprung up to assist developers in taming it, because of the inconsistencies in the browsers' implementations of the XMLHttpRequest object; jQuery...