Slashdot Mirror
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 usually consider that 10% of the users have javascript partially or fully disabled either because they use javascript-less browsers (rare) or because of security issues (corporate environments). The trick there is to develop your web application with the Progressive Enhancements philosophy in mind: build a layered, Javascript/AJAX is merely a client-side behavioural layer added on top of the content layer (pure HTML) and the style layer (CSS), it relies on both but shouldn't be necessary for the application itself to work. It's merely applying the good ol' layers separation on your client-side web pages.
Following the Progressive Enhancements "way" raises the chances that your websites will degrade fairly gracefully when the upper layers are not available (old browser, quirks, ...) without "shutting down" the whole site for the user (or lower the cost/pain of having them degrade gracefully).
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
My honest first impression was that ti was a spyware site, you know, the ones that look useful, but are really just there for the sake of serving ads?