AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML--it was originally designed for asynchronously manipulating XML data using JavaScript because at the time, the future was XML. The act of using JavaScript to send requests is still sometimes referred to as AJAX, despite usually not dealing with XML in any way. The most common use for sending asynchronous requests is making API calls, which today generally return JSON, but you could use AJAX to load HTML and dynamically add it to the page.
the person I replied to said "we dont need any of this fancy hotloading" and then gave examples of fancy hotloading, hence me asking, and pointing out the contradiction.
Like you said, AJAX isnt limited to XML, and is really just referring to any use of XMLHttpRequest to hotload data whether its XML, JSON etc.
I wasnt asking what ajax was. I was asking if it falls into the definition of "fancy."
I think my parent proved the opposite point they meant to. old reddit and hn and wp ARE the fancy html over wire sites, and airbnb and reddit are NOT the fancy over wire sites.
