20 years ago: AJAX revolutionizes web development
On February 18, 2005, Jesse Garrett coined the term AJAX for asynchronous data transfer between browser and server. He came up with the name in the shower.
Asynchronous data transfer has changed the way users interact with web applications.
(Image: Tero Vesalainen/Shutterstock.com)
- Christian Liebel
Twenty years ago, AJAX enabled web applications to achieve an unprecedented level of interactivity. The concept came from James Garrett. He founded the agency Adaptive Path in 2001, which advises its clients on user experience and design. With AJAX, he contributed to Web 2.0.
In the early 2000s, many web applications relied on server-side dynamics: if users wanted to change the view or perform an action, this led to server-side navigation: the server processed the HTTP(S) request and then sent back a new HTML page as a response, which had to be completely rebuilt in the browser.
Given this "start-stop nature" of the web, Garrett looked enviously at desktop application developers who can respond much faster and more fluidly.
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Gmail and Orkut impress with their interaction design
Around 2004, a new type of web application finally attracted attention, including Google's newly launched email service Gmail and the social network Orkut.
These applications impressed with their innovative interaction design and better performance, made possible by asynchronous data transfer. Instead of requiring a complete page change, HTTP(S) requests are transmitted in the background using JavaScript. The response can contain data or fragments that are then integrated into the loaded page at runtime.
(Image:Â RichOnTech.tv)
The basics were already in place
As the aforementioned web applications emerged, Garrett was asked by more and more customers how they could develop such applications. Because alternative approaches such as Flash were slow and required an installed plug-in, he advised his customers to stick with the standard technologies that browsers could easily understand: JavaScript and XML.
The technical foundations for implementing asynchronous data transfer were already in place: As early as 1999, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 shipped the ActiveX object Microsoft.XMLHTTP, originally developed by the Outlook Web Access team to execute HTTP(S) requests in the background. The concept was later implemented in other browsers in the form of the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript interface.
The server responds to the request with data, for example in XML format, which is then displayed using JavaScript via the Document Object Model (DOM) with HTML and CSS.
The name is created in the shower
In view of the many different technologies and abbreviations, Garrett realizes that an accessible name is needed to spread the new application model. In the shower, he finally came up with a name that also had a catchy initial abbreviation: Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or AJAX for short.
On February 18, 2005, Garrett published the blog post Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications on Adaptive Path's company blog. In it, he enthusiastically reports on the new interaction patterns in web applications that are now commonplace: These include, for example, suggestions while typing in a Google search or the ability to simply move the map with a mouse in Google Maps. With other services, this was previously only possible by clicking on arrows at the edge of a map and waiting for it to reload.
(Image:Â Wikimedia Commons)
In the blog post, he contrasts the classic, synchronous, server-side dynamized application model with the AJAX model. In his proposal, he adds an AJAX module to the architecture diagram of the classic web application, which can be accessed via JavaScript and receives responses in XML format. The Q&A section of the blog post already states that other formats are also possible, such as the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), which is predominantly used today.
(Image:Â Jesse James Garrett)
AJAX has become an important part of Web 2.0
The buzzword AJAX spread quickly. Tim O'Reilly also mentioned the concept in the much-noticed blog post What Is Web 2.0, which appeared on September 30, 2005. This blog post differentiated the rigid old Web 1.0 from the new, interactive, collaborative and dynamic Web 2.0.
As time went on, more and more websites used AJAX technology and many other interfaces were created to develop powerful applications for the web.
The name fades ...
The term AJAX is used less and less today. The use of asynchronous data transfer is now common practice and since XML has largely been replaced by JSON as the data exchange format, the name is no longer really appropriate.
Web technologies have also evolved: the unwieldy XMLHttpRequest interface was followed by the more accessible fetch API. Single-page applications, such as those that can be developed with Angular and React, rely on asynchronous data transfer across the board. Thanks to the interfaces of progressive web apps, even a network connection is not required. In many cases, web applications have replaced the desktop applications that Garrett envied at the time.
... the interaction patterns remain
Even if the name AJAX is slowly disappearing, the new interaction patterns that were first widely used on the web 20 years ago remain. A web without them would be unimaginable today.
Jesse James Garrett won Wired Magazine's Rave Award in 2006 for spreading the AJAX concept. He told the magazine about AJAX: "It's the difference between watching still images and actually watching the movie."
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