What is Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript XML)? 

In this lesson, we’ll learn what Ajax is and some examples where it is used on the internet AJAX is simply a technique for creating fast and dynamic web pages. Ajax is a client side technique, by which a web developer makes calls to a server without refreshing the page. Since the technique is client side, it happens on the browser and the FrontEnd developers work on this technique.

If you go to any website for example iLoveCoding and you click on the lessons or playlist section, the whole page will refresh; the call is being made to the server and the page is being refreshed, this means it’s not really an Ajax call.

For example:
If we click on the “Contact us” button a little window will pop up and if you fill it out and send the information, it will send the information without refreshing the whole page. As you can see below, it made two calls but the page didn’t refresh at all and it sent the message without refreshing the page.

You can learn more about Ajax on how to use it in Learn jQuery in 14 days course.You will find the lessons on how to use Ajax technique. Ajax is used extensively throughout the internet. The entire Gmail platform is build via the Ajax technique. Twitter uses the same technique as well. If you click on any person's followers or followings, the page won't refresh and you will still be able to view their followers or followings etc.

Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and xml. Asynchronous means that the call happens not at one particular time. When the HTML page loads, all the code is processed one line after the other in a synchronous way. But Asynchronous call can happen anytime whenever a button is clicked or action is taken etc. XML is just a data format which looks as shown below. It has some data organized in a particular XML style fashion that holds the information as you can see below.

But JSON is a more popular format. 

This is a warp, I hope you enjoyed this lesson. To learn how to use Ajax, head over to the jQuery course and there are a few lessons on how to use Ajax at the end. If you have any question, leave your comments below. I'll talk to you in the next lesson. Good bye :)