Ajax, sometimes written as AJAX (shorthand for asynchronous JavaScript + XML), is a group of interrelated web development techniques used on the client-side to create interactive web applications or rich Internet applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. The use of Ajax has led to an increase in interactive animation on web pages and better quality of Web services thanks to the asynchronous mode.

Data is retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object. Despite the name, the use of JavaScript and XML is not actually required, nor do the requests need to be asynchronous. Like DHTML and LAMP, Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies.

Ajax uses a combination of: Jesse James Garrett thought of the term "Ajax" while in the shower, when he realized the need for a shorthand term to represent the suite of technologies he was proposing to a client. While the term was coined in 2005, alternative techniques for the asynchronous loading of content date back to the mid 1990s. Java applets were introduced in the first version of the Java language in 1995.

These allow compiled client-side code to load data asynchronously from the web server after a web page is loaded. In 1996, Internet Explorer introduced the IFrame element to HTML, which also enables this to be achieved. In 1999, Microsoft created the XMLHTTP ActiveX control in Internet Explorer 5.

This is now supported by Mozilla, Safari and other browsers as the native XMLHttpRequest object. On April 5, 2006 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the first draft specification for the object in an attempt to create an official web standard.

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