Because a day can’t go by without something about Ajax appearing onscreen, I’m stealing a news item that Todd posted to our project portal that IE7 will have a native XMLHttpRequest Object:
In IE6, 5.5, and 5 (yes it’s been there for 8 years) you had to use MSXML as an ActiveX control to get use of the XMLHttp object, but in IE7 the implementation will more closely resemble the defacto-standard that Firefox and Safari use.
When I asked Todd what this means effectively for developers, he told me (via IM): “It removes the requirement that the IE user have ActiveX enabled in their browser to use AJAX sites,” and that it helps establish “a common platform for the developer writing AJAX sites: Firefox, Safari and IE7 will all use XMLHttpRequest object.”
Anything that saves work for developers is a Good Thing in my book.
