COWS Ajax - Ajax evolved

COWS Ajax claims to take over where Ajax leaves off. Ajax applications take a long time to create and debug. 

With COWS AJAX you simply address an AJAX service on another page.

"The classic Ajax example is to auto-complete the user’s city/state after they enter their zip. Peachy... but how many developers have access to an up-to-date zip code databases? Wouldn’t it be better for the US Post Office to create a tool that you could simply access from your web app/page? You should be able to drop in a single-line of code that handles zip lookups and frees you up to work on the meat of your app/site. This isn’t possible with Ajax, and that’s where COWS Ajax takes over."

The first COWS Ajax application is SpellingCow, a spell checker that allows you to spell check as-you-type. You can use this spell checker to handle all the processing, allowing the user to communicate with both your site and SpellingCow.

"Apps like SpellingCow simply are not possible with Ajax. The short story is that Ajax must adhere to the browser same-origin policy, meaning that the user can only talk back to your site, and no others. COWS Ajax is able to breakdown this barrier via a method known as dynamic script tags. Like Ajax, it’s a method that has been around for a long time (and works in many browsers & versions)."