First W3C Working Draft on the XMLHttpRequest Object

JavaScriptSearch
Friday, April 7, 2006; 02:32 AM

This week the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published its first working draft on the XMLHttpRequest object, which is a key component of the popular AJAX technology.  The purpose of the document is to ensure interoperability between popular web browsers.  It is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/ .

The mission of W3C, as stated on their website, is to develop Web standards and guidelines.  Since 1994, W3C has published more than ninety such standards, called W3C Recommendations.  W3C Recommendations  are specifications guidelines that, after extensive consensus-building, has received the endorsement of W3C members, which include major IT companies and organizations.

The working draft on XMLHttpReques object documents a minimum set of  interoperable features based on existing implementations, allowing Web developers to use these features without platform-specific code.  Future versions of the specification may add new features.

Twenty experts from industry leaders, including Apple Computer, Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Sun Microsystems, contributed to the creation of the working draft.