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Asynchronous Requests with JavaScript and Ajax
An anonymous reader writes "I rarely read an entire article about a single object, especially one that is this simple. However, you will use this object over and over again in each page and application that you write that uses Ajax. This article shows you how to create XMLHttpRequest instances in a cross-browser way, construct and send requests, and respond to the server."
I think users who are disabling JavaScript are already doing themselves more harm than good. There are some genuinely good dynamic interfaces out there, and compared to the time and bandwidth savings they'll get by using them properly, the time required to install FireFox or a popup/ad blocker is negligible.
At least for intranet and company sites, there's a genuine demand for functionality that it's impossible to expose without full Javascript support. Consider a drag-and-drop interface where customer orders appear on the left-hand side, and the line items can be organized into a grid of dates and production stations (a piece of machinery or a particular set of workers) via drag-and-drop. I have a working AJAX app that does this, but I can't think how such an application would be useful in the absence of JavaScript. It would require literally hundreds of pageloads and a metric ton of typing (remember: No Javascript = No Calendar Picker) to do any meaningful analysis and manipulation, and the very act of using it would destroy the user's workflow/concentration, rendering the application less useful than the scrawled paper notes it replaces.
This is the direction the web is moving. There are a lot of consumer applications that would benefit from taking a more dynamic approach, especially when you combine the intuitiveness of drag and drop with the live feedback made possible by XMLHTTPRequest. I think that coddling to users without JavaScript is holding them back, as well as creating a lot of useless "busy-work" for web designers and developers.
Jasin NataelTrue science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
Use AJAX without the X. JSON works quite well when XML is overkill. Sometimes you will need the complexity of XML, but much of the time(including those examples in that article), XML is complete overkill.