Introduction to Ajax for Page Authors

Ajax is currently the primary technique for driving the high responsiveness and interactivity of some of the most popular applications on the web such as Google Maps and Flickr. Ajax has different implications for developers working in different roles. For example, component developers creating custom components for web applications build Ajax functionality into the design. Page authors use these Ajax components, along with widgets, JavaScript technology, and other techniques, to incorporate Ajax functionality into their web applications. Ajax impacts other roles too. This paper focuses on page authors and describes various techniques that can be used to add Ajax functionality to a web page.