AJAX

So here I was, thinking AJAX was some magical combination of various elements. Apparently not. At least, not on the client side. You just have an "XMLHTTPRequest" object that you

1. define a field called onreadystatechange as a lambda function for what to do when the server hits you back,
2. open() with options to
   • read or write, like a file,
   • locate the script running the server, and
   • whether or not to run asynchronously
3. send() after you've opened.

There. Ignoring IE 5 and 6 (which every sane person should do), there's your API for a client side AJAX script.