The phrase “AJAX” has been thrown around a lot with the Web 2.0 buzz, but what does it really mean?  Sure, it’s an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, but it’s much more than just that.  The ability to interact with HTTP via JavaScript has allowed developers to do some pretty cool things with the browser as a UI.  With its popularity, protocols such as JSON have arisen changing the way we think about delivering code to the browser.  The onset of new libraries such as jQuery, Prototype, and Dojo have made manipulating the DOM and working with data structures even easier.  JavaScript as a language has seen so much success recently that even software vendors are providing APIs to their products so they can be integrated easily into web applications with ease.

What I hope to do during this presentation is show some very basic explanations and examples of the different ways to work with JavaScript to bring data to the browser.  I won’t focus too much on DHTML, but more on sending and receiving data.  If we have time, I also hope to show the JavaScript API for working with BlazeDS (no Flex needed).

Dave Reed will also present a Community Case Study.