Ajax

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML: A way of including content in a web page in which javascript code in the web page fetches some data from a server and displays it without re-fetching the entire surrounding page at the same time (hence the 'Asynchronous') Often (but not always) the data fetched by the javascript code is in XML format. It is common for Ajax applications to update the Ajax content multiple times without the surrounding page needing to be updated even once. A simple example of Ajax would be a weather-forcast box in the middle of a web page. Ajax could be used to populate the box every 5 minutes without needing to refresh the surrounding page.