[thelist] GET requests and sent content

[Paul Bennett]

Morning all,
I have recently begun a new job and am involved in building some  web 
applications which will and do get a substantial amount of traffic. The 
applications have been coded so far to use all sorts of client-side JS 
to package and post form requests (some via get, some via post, some via 
the xmlhttp object). I have been told that the focus is on minimizing 
the size of the data flowing between the client and server.

Now I am definiteley one to avoid javascript when there is a built in 
browser function which does the same thing by default. I have been told 
by the very knowledgable lead developer that normal form get and post 
requests also send back the entire html of the page they are on and 
hence they use JS to minimize the size of the sent data.

 This to me seems ludicrous. My understanding is that the browser 
packages the request and simply sends back the form data to the server. 
If this is true then my job becomes simpler and the web applications can 
instantly become more accessible as currently the js stuff locks out 
some browsers (I hate this) which also doesn't make sense to me in the 
age of standards support and openess that web development is focussing on.

Can anyone via actual reference confirm or deny my suspicions about the 
browser GET / POST system???

Many thanks,
Paul B