DevWebPro

In today's WSJ, Lee Gomes looks at Google's expanding use of various technologies known as Ajax.

Ajax is a recently coined name for a dense mouthful of software technologies that are built into Web browsers. The most important of them are JavaScript, a computer-programming language; dynamic HTML, which is a way of displaying information on a screen; and XMLHTTP, a procedure a Web browser can use to very quickly get information from a central server.

You can see Ajax in action when you view Google Maps.

To see what they are capable of, go to maps.google.com, zoom into a location, click inside the map and then drag the image around. It's Ajax that is moving the map for you, scrolling it much faster than you're probably used to on the Web.

WSJ subscribers can read the rest of the article.