What is Fjax? Flash Powered Ajax

Recently some friends were mentioning about a new tech term called Fjax, but my knowledge was limited to Ajax. First I thought that they were wrongly pronouncing Ajax as Fjax, but I soon realized I need to know more about what Fjax is…

For starters, Ajax is short for “Asynchronous JavaScript & XML” and powers an amazing level of dynamic web interactivity by enabling a browser to retrieve data and load it onto a page without refreshing the browser window e.g. in gmail, Digg spy etc… And when I went searching for Fjax, I “stumbled upon” this recent Webmonkey Q&A on Fjax by Michael Calore.

“Fjax works a whole lot like Ajax — it uses an XML file to pass data to a browser — except that it uses a tiny bit of Flash, instead of the browser, to parse the XML. All of that browser-specific code is eliminated, leaving the application more lightweight and putting less of a strain on the browser.”

“Steve McDonald: Fjax is an alternative method for doing the kind of Web 2.0 builds that are currently done in Ajax. The advantage is that it does it in a fraction of the size, and requires no code forking to work in the different browsers. It’s a streamlined way of doing asynchronous content updates with XML.”

“Jay McDonald: The secret is that it’s using Flash (the “F” in Fjax) to act as a speedy little XML parsing engine, instead of handling all of that in JavaScript. But Fjax’s use of Flash is a pretty significant departure from how Flash has historically been used.”

Read their full article. Fjax is in its very early stages of development and I am sure it will revolutionize the web when it is incorporated in web applications by Web 2.0 designers and developers.