What is AJAX?

AJAX, which is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a technique for building fast and dynamic web pages. With this technique, you can easily updates certain sections of a webpage without having to reload the entire web page. This is achieved by allowing the web page to exchange small bits of information with a server behind the scenes. Major web applications which make use of this technology include Google Maps, Facebook, Gmail and YouTube.

Let us take Google Maps for instance, wherever the user navigates the map, new tiles are added and populated with the information dynamically without having to update the entire web page. This results in an amazing user experience while providing the user with the information that they need when they need it. Whenever the user get to the end of a page in Facebook, new posts are added dynamically using AJAX and one can view more posts uninterrupted.