Ajax Clarified

Ajax does not equal Web 2.0 but since they are mentioned so often in the same breath it is worth defining what Ajax is and is not.

From the Mozilla Developer Center:

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is not a technology in itself, but is a term that describes a "new" approach to using a number of existing technologies together, including: HTML or XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, The Document Object Model, XML, XSLT, and the XMLHttpRequest object. When these technologies are combined in the AJAX model, web applications are able to make quick, incremental updates to the user interface without reloading the entire browser page. This makes the application faster and more responsive to user actions.

I happen to like Ajax a lot but utilizing the Ajax itself does not make a site Web 2.0. Got it?

tags:web 2.0 web2.0 web-20 Social technology