Too bad Ajah isn't a Greek hero
They should have just called it "HttpRequest". It's a shame that the methods are named "XMLHttpRequest", etc. because you don't have to return XML, or even HTML. I'm finding a lot of the Requests I write are best returning "OK". Take [link|http://www.aminus.org/rbre/tibia/demo/tibia.py|Tibia], the DOM webpage editor I wrote a while back. The demo is version 0.1, and "saving your work" consists of
1. Hit "Save".
2. Wait for the popup to show.
3. Wait for it to complete.
4. Stop and read the reply to make sure it was successful.
5. Close the popup.
6. Now that you're horribly out of flow, try to recall what you were doing.
The next version (which I have to finish one of these days ;) --needs undo) will be:
1. Hit "Save".
2. Go on about your business. The save button will disable if the save operation is successful (until you dirty your doc again). If something goes wrong, you get an alert.
You can do the same thing with hidden frames, of course. I guess part of the appeal of Ajax is what Todd and other teams like his are doing: building modules on top of the tech. I haven't seen much of that with IFRAMEs. But it's really more about the confluence of Ajax and RESTful design.
