Web application development is the trend. Its emergence has solved business problems even before we realized them. For example: Google’s Blogger. Did we know that we need a blogging tool to write blogs for our websites? Another example is emergence of Social media applications. Did we know that our company’s marketing required it so desperately?
There are tremendous advantages of internet applications. Its growth and demand are ever growing and the growth curve doesn’t seem to be falling anytime soon. With emergence of mobile technology and feasible internet access over mobile phones, there has been an overwhelming response to web applications.
Look at the situation few years ago. Each processing in your application gave you enough time to grab a cup of coffee. The moment you launch application, you could see an hourglass that gave you a feeling of a quick nap till the time your application consults the web server and responds back to you. This was the cause of slow and tedious applications and there was a lot of customer wait involved.
The technology advanced and brought improvements. The applications that we experience now are faster and offer a wide variety of features. The current websites are built with web 2.0 technology that eliminates request | process | response cycle and are utilizing services on the web server to return data that can be rendered without making page transitions. Let’s discuss the technology that has brought about a revolutionary change in the way we see applications, today.
Introduction to AJAX
AJAX is an acronym to asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Like LAMP and DHTML, AJAX is a combination of technologies used on the client side to create interactive applications. It is responsible to get you rid of the hourglass and gets your work done, faster. Data, content, and design are merged together into a seamless whole. Applications using this technology ensure very little lag time.
It allows data interchange with XML and XSLT and applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. In order to display dynamic content, DOM is used for interaction with the page. It allows asynchronous data retrieval with XMLHttpRequest and finally, JavaScript is used to tie all the functions together.
Interaction with Server’s Database and Flash
As discussed earlier, old applications were slow. The reason was applications’ communication with the server. Applications needed a trigger point to either load a new page to display information or refresh an existing page. Whereas, with new technology code, communication with server is easy and web applications show information dynamically, without the need of refresh, on the page. They also have a potential to show incorrect user names, password, and can validate other user credential dynamically without any wait time.
AJAX web development also facilitates Flash interactions. It has a capacity to send, receive and edit information on flash forms and display it dynamically. A visitor can make multiple requests within a page and never have to change or refresh the page. It is used to pull dates or time. Reputed name such as Google is using this technology for its emails, maps, and various other applications.
Measuring Benefits
From business point of view, AJAX development saves tremendous cost, offers faster access time, and makes better use of information assets. Some major benefits of hiring AJAX developer is as follows:
- Eliminates time spent waiting for the page, which can add up to significant cost.
- Time spent waiting for the task accomplishment reduces employee’s productivity. Reduced time can bring-in efficiency at the task-level, eventually, increasing the company’s revenue.
- Reducing number of steps has implications for the time consumed and reduced errors leading to efficient task performance.
- It can reduce the number of round trips by minimizing the number of page transitions in a web application.
- It helps to enhance the responsiveness of various applications and therefore increase productivity through promoting and uninterrupted workflow.
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