Ajax: Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

Chapter 7. XMLHttpRequest Several years ago, I worked for a company that had a reputation for conceiving incredible ideas. Unfortunately, the company also had a reputation for being unable to either recognize the value of those ideas or mark...

7.1. Synchronous Although not nearly as cool as coding an asynchronous client-side application, a synchronous client-side application is nothing to look down at. In fact, it beats the pants off the average web applicationfiguratively speaking, of ...

7.2. Asynchronous On the surface, what's required to change the request from synchronous to asynchronous appears to be simply changing the false parameter to TRue for the open method. Unfortunately, although that would make the request asynchronou...

7.3. Microsoft Internet Explorer Unlike most other web browsers, Microsoft Internet Explorer uses something called ActiveX, which is a holdover from an earlier age when object libraries where new, untried, and obscure. Because of this, ActiveX is ...

7.4. XML Document Object Model The majority of web developers are familiar with the HTML DOM, but unless they're used to XML development, they might not even realize that the XML DOM exists. In fact, even if they are aware that there is a Document...

7.5. RSS Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, is a dialect of XML that is commonly used for providing news-related content. Things such as news headlines are the realm of RSS. The only issue is that because RSS is XML, it doesn't appear as pretty as...

7.6. Web Services Regardless of where you look, web services are a hot subject, and not just on resumés. Something of a mystique surrounds web services; like the latest hot video game, everybody wants one, even if nobody is quite sure wha...

7.7. Summary This chapter covered the object essential to Ajax, the XMLHttpRequest object in both Gecko-based browsers and Microsoft Internet Explorer. In addition, the differences between synchronous and asynchronous requests were described, alon...