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One thing that Ajax technology affords us is the ability to provide additional levels of interaction for users, within static web pages. This means that you can begin to change how a static web page actually operates while still providing a seamless user experience.

The most important functionality that Ajax technology affords is the ability to create highly interactive user interfaces, many of which weren’t previously possible. An example of one of these new user interface elements is what’s known as the field. The autocomplete search field is much like a normal text field, but it automatically completes search terms as you begin to type them in. This means that as you’re typing a search query, the client is sending requests to the server (in the background) in an attempt to give you faster and more accurate results.

With different server-side MVC frameworks flying to the forefront of web application development (such as Ruby on Rails and Django), I figure now is a good time to look at some of the alternative programming languages used for web application development. The example I explore in this chapter is a simple in-browser wiki.

In the past couple years there’s been a tremendous amount of development on the JavaScript language—and from many directions. The Mozilla Foundation has been making progress on improving the quality of the JavaScript language, aligning it with ECMAScript 4 (the language that JavaScript is based upon). On another front, the WHAT-WG, a collaboration of web browser manufacturers who want to develop new technologies that allow writing and deploying applications over the Web, has created the specification for the next generation of browser-based applications. Finally, library authors and corporations have been working to solidify the techniques of streaming browser-based applications into the technique called . All of this represents the future of the JavaScript language and browser-based development.