Section 3.2 Ajax and Ajax-enabled Rich Internet Applications

Learning Objectives

After you have completed this section, you should be able to

• explain what a Rich Internet Application (RIA) is.
• distinguish between traditional web applications and RIAs
• explain how Ajax-enabled web applications interact with web servers.
• develop RIAs with Ajax.

Activities

• Carefully read the learning objectives.
• Watch the presentation for the section;
• Study the Ajax-enabled application examples posted at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/AJAX
• Read Chapter 16, Ajax-Enabled Rich Internet Applications with XML and JSON, of the e-text
• Study the tutorial at https://www.xul.fr/en-xml-ajax.html
• Find answers to the study questions below.
• Do exercises 16.3 through 16.8 in Chapter 16.

Study Questions

1. What are RIAs?
2. What does Ajax standard for?
3. What is raw Ajax?
4. What are the important differences between RIAs and traditional web applications?
5. What is the most important JavaScript object in the world of Ajax?
6. What is a callback function?
7. What are the advantages of partial page updates?
8. How is Ajax related to RIAs?
9. What is the history of Ajax?
10. How can the XMLHttpRequest object be used to create raw Ajax applications ?
11. What are asynchronous requests?
12. How does XMLHttpRequest object manage asynchronous requests?
13. What properties and methods does the XMLHttpRequest object provide for you to use?
14. How can XML and the DOM be used by the XMLHttpRequest object to create Ajax-enabled RIAs?

Review

Do the self-review exercises for Chapter 16.

Summary

Read the Chapter 16 summary.