The introduction of AJAX marked a huge leap forward in the history of the web. The ability to communicate with a web server without reloading the page has revolutionised how web applications are built. The primary technology that enables AJAX (XMLHttpRequests) has evolved significantly since the initial conception of dynamic websites.

A nice feature added to XMLHttpRequests in recent years is the ability to handle file uploads. Traditionally many developers have resorted to using technologies like Flash to upload files to a server. The problem with this approach is that the user needs to have a third-party browser plugin installed.

In this post you’ll learn how to upload files to a server using native JavaScript technologies. The example we’re going to use supports uploading multiple files in a single request. However, you can apply the same principles to single-file uploads too.

File Upload widget with multiple file selection, drag&drop support, progress bars and preview images for jQuery.
Supports cross-domain, chunked and resumable file uploads and client-side image resizing.
Works with any server-side platform (PHP, Python, Ruby on Rails, Java, Node.js, Go etc.) that supports standard HTML form file uploads.

I think it's safe to say the days of using images to provide the "small touches" are over. We can now safely create gradients, drop shadows, rounded corners, and scaled, rotated, transformed animations. It seems we've now moved on to replacing more complex effects, like spinner images. A great project called spin.js has surfaced, allowing developers to create CSS-powered spinners where keyframes are available, and uses VML as a fallback for Internet Explorer. spin.js is very customizable and is built with pure JavaScript so that no toolkit is required (though a jQuery plugin is available within the site demo). Let's have a look at how to use and customize spin.js!

One of the unsung heros in the HTML5 universe is XMLHttpRequest. Strictly speaking XHR2 isn't HTML5. However, it's part of the incremental improvements browser vendors are making to the core platform. I'm including XHR2 in our new bag of goodies because it plays such an integral part in today's complex web apps.

Turns out our old friend got a huge makeover but many folks are unaware of its new features. XMLHttpRequest Level 2 introduces a slew of new capabilities which put an end to crazy hacks in our web apps; things like cross-origin requests, uploading progress events, and support for uploading/downloading binary data. These allow AJAX to work in concert with many of the bleeding edge HTML5 APIs such as File System API, Web Audio API, and WebGL.

This tutorial highlights some of the new features in XMLHttpRequest, especially those that can be used for working with files.

We will learn how to create a dynamic ajax based shoutbox with jQuery from scratch. It will be very interesting to know how to use the ajax function of jQuery and how it can be used to insert and recover data from a MySQL database via PHP in a way asynchronous

Because is very useful and powerful, it is considered as a standard approach to design modern web-applications.Using Ajax you can develop interactive solutions for lightboxes, form validation, search, tooltips, navigation and tables. Always keep in mind its drawback in terms of usability and accessibility. Extensive Ajax means that you can easily confuse your visitors giving them to much control and features.

Written in javascript and PHP, SigmaVisual is web based visual AJAX UI builder for professional developers. Developers save their time in building up prototype as well as real web applications. TreeBar, TreeGrid, Layout, Menu are supported

Modal Dialog and Lightbox are Ajax solutions for displaying the content inside the browser without reloading the whole page. Lightboxes overcome the use of the pop up window to suit on the modern browsers and it is being used everywhere these days. It is widely used for displaying of media files, webpages , messages, forms etc in a nice looking overlay.

In this post, I’ll be featuring 30 awesome lightbox and modal dialog boxes that you can use on you web applications.

Let’s be honest…WordPress’ search functionality isn’t great. Let’s be more honest…no search functionality is better than Google’s. Luckily for us, Google provides an awesome method by which we can use their search for our own site: the Google AJAX Search API. Let me show you how to implement this awesome API within your own website!