5 Things You Can Do With AJAX

AJAX (or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is used to produce incredibly interactive websites. The aim of AJAX is to take the data on the website and exchange it with the server so that the page itself doesn’t need to be refreshed when a user clicks on a button, tab, or makes a request of the server. Basically, without knowing the exact technical side, AJAX produces instantaneous changes and increases your website’s speed and is commonly used as a tool to interact in a way that’s most efficient.

So what can you do with AJAX?

Real-time Form Validation

The next time you’re signing up an account with Lunarpages, take a look at how the form interacts with your requests – at Lunarpages, we use AJAX in a variety of functional ways to decrease mistakes or errors on the user’s part. For example, if you try to leave the name or email address fields blank on any of our Order Pages, some red text will tell you to take another look and enter the appropriate information before you can process the form.

Form Validation can be accomplished without AJAX, but with this incredible suite of technologies you can show the customer or user what they’re doing wrong or what they’re missing in real time. This decreases the need for refreshing the page, hitting the “back” button to correct data, and can help increase productivity. When requests are handled in real time, everything connects instantly, and your customers will really appreciate the time saver!

Real-Time Auto-Complete

I’m sure you’re starting to see the benefits to the real-time features that AJAX can implement, but if not, you’re going to be impressed with this little trick. Using AJAX, you can add an auto-complete function to any form on your site. This is very helpful for many customers and can add an element of elegance to any website’s simple form. This simple tool allows for suggestions directly in the text box as the user types, so if they’re typing “California”, auto-complete can suggest it before they’ve finished typing it. Yet another incredible time saver.

Interactive Calendar

AJAX is intuitive, so there are really not many limits to what it can’t do. It can make a simple form, image, or calendar become interactive and even fun. With the interactive calendar, a user simply starts typing the date, and the entire calendar loads in their browser instantly. This can help picking a date for vacation or travel a breeze and also makes the entire signup or information-request process much easier for businesses that require scheduled appointments for visits or tours, such as rental or real estate websites, web design firms, and more. The customer will definitely appreciate the effort.

Real-Time Ratings

Have you ever visited a website that has a voting community for many categories and applies a 5-star rating to each? Well, now you can create this kind of effect with an instantly updated rating system with AJAX!

With the 5-star Rating Bar, powered by AJAX, customers or users need simply to click on the amount of stars they’d like to give each website or product and the vote is immediately recorded. One of the cool things about this script is that though it works based on JavaScript, if a user has JavaScript turned off, it will still work (though in that case, the page will reload). Even so, it’s a great tool that will give you a really polished look on your next project.

Have Fun!

AJAX is meant to increase the usability of your site, so play around with it and you can create some really interesting examples of AJAX technology. Add a bouncing effect to text, images, and more, or implement drag and drop into your web design software! While these things are incredibly fun to play with, customers will also appreciate the ease at which everything is controllable, movable, and interactive. Especially for web design software, this make editing a website easier than navigating there in the first place! You can also adding a zoom effect to enhance any map, directions, photo collages, artwork, and more.

With AJAX, you are only limited by what you can design or think up, and the benefits are sure to impress any prospective clients and secure a great future relationship with them.