AsyncHttpEvalRequest: A New Primitive for Downloading Web Applications Incrementally and Securely

The evolution of the World Wide Web has progressed from simple, classic Web pages with text and static images only to Web 2.0 pages with rich multimedia content, mashups and desktop-style applications. The cornerstone of Web 2.0 technologies is an API called XMLHttpRequest - an interface that allows network requests to be performed asynchronously without blocking the user interface of the Web browser. In this paper we introduce a new operation called AsyncHttpEvalRequest that is the logical extension of XMLHttpRequest for Web applications. The main benefit of the new operation is that it allows large Web applications to be downloaded incrementally and more securely.