Chapter 19. Unobtrusive Ajax

Ajax (often referred to as AJAX) is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. As we'll see, the XML part isn't as significant as it used to be, but the asynchronous part is what makes Ajax useful; it is a model for requesting data from the server in the background, without having to reload the web page. We saw a specialized example of Ajax when we looked at performing remote validation in Chapter 18, but it is a general technique that we can apply more widely.