February 18, 2005
Jesse James Garrett coins AJAX
Jesse James Garrett coined "Ajax" on February 18, 2005 — naming asynchronous JavaScript and XMLExtensible Markup Language — a markup format for structured documents and data exchange. techniques powering Gmail and Google Maps.
What it was for
Garrett's essay gave developers vocabulary for partial page updates — XHR, DOM scripting, and JSONJavaScript Object Notation — a lightweight text format for structured data exchange on the web. APIs without full reloads. The label launched a decade of Web 2.0 apps before ReactA JavaScript library for building UIs — component trees and declarative rendering for the web. reframed the same ideas as components.
People
- Jesse James Garrett — author
Why it's here
The AJAX label unified emerging rich-web techniques under one name.
Why it mattered
It accelerated adoption of APIApplication programming interface — a defined way for programs to talk to each other or to a service.-driven, interactive browser applications.
What it solved
TeamsMicrosoft Teams — chat, video calls, and Office integration for workplace collaboration. were reinventing partial-update UIs without shared patterns or terminology.
Media
ImageJesse James GarrettChristine Claypoole, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Related
- XMLHttpRequest introduced in IE5March 18, 1999
- jQuery 1.0 releasedAugust 26, 2006
- Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporate GoogleSeptember 4, 1998