AJAX features

AJAX is a mixture of several popular technologies put together to build the next generation of web applications, which are more responsive, more interactive and behave like their desktop counterparts. MX AJAX Toolbox brings the benefits of AJAX to Dreamweaver.
Asynchronous loading of content without page refresh
With MX AJAX Toolbox, an AJAX site has one or more master pages. The building blocks of any master page are the AJAX panels – regions of content that users can place anywhere in their site and that change their state independently from the rest of the page. Each AJAX panel has one or more states – the actual files included in the website when an AJAX request that calls them is performed. AJAX Panels can be reused across multiple master pages, in order to reduce development time. For instance, you can reuse a menu panel in all your site pages, without having to rebuild it each time.




When AJAX links are clicked within a site, only the targeted panel state is loaded, independently and asynchronously, without refreshing the whole page.
Working with AJAX panels will appear very familiar to developers, since the approach is similar to using editable regions in Dreamweaver templates, or using master pages in Microsoft Visual Studio.
Increased interactivity and responsiveness
With MX AJAX Toolbox, developers can build Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that interact with site visitors, offering them a unique web experience. Visitors can continue using the website while parts of it load separately and asynchronously. They will enjoy the increased interactivity that comes with a suite of AJAX controls and widgets included in the toolbox. AJAX websites will render fast on their first load, while incrementally loading necessary JavaScript files in the background. This means users on slow connections (such as dial-up) will be able to see and interact with the website immediately after they access it.
Reduced loading time and server traffic
Since only parts of the site are loaded at one time (states of the AJAX panels), the loading time is obviously shorter than if the whole page refreshed. Server traffic is considerably reduced. Because only parts of the page content are sent, the bandwidth usage decreases and websites will appear to load seamlessly.