31. ASP.NET AJAX Extensions

What Is Ajax?

The underlying architecture of web applications has always posed a problem with usability. Whenever a user performs an action on a page that requires a post back to the web server, data from all form fields is sent over the network, the page goes blank, and the browser sits in limbo waiting for the web server to send the response. In a typical ASP.NET scenario where a post back reloads the same page after the server processes the data, the speed of the application can be sacrificed because the entire page must reload each time it’s posted back.

Ajax is well-suited to providing a user experience that doesn’t suffer from such problems. When a page uses Ajax to post back to the server, only the applicable ...

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