CORS for IE

CORS for IE

I wrote an façade that allows jQuery's .ajax() function to use CORS even with Microsoft's browser-like program, Internet Explorer.

For the uninitiated, here is an explanation of what this means:
  1. Ajax allows JavaScript to retrieve data from the server via HTTP requests
  2. For security reasons, JavaScript wasn't allowed to retrieve from any server but the one that served the page it was on.
  3. Last year, a protocol was agreed to that would allow servers to control whether they could be read from other servers' JavaScript.
  4. All the legitimate browsers added support for this protocol, called CORS.
  5. Microsoft, as is its wont, claimed to support CORS, but didn't.  All they did was add a new object, XDomainRequest,  that can use CORS -- but lacks ordinary AJAX functionality.
What I have done is write a routine for IE that adds (an approximation of) AJAX functionality to XDomainRequest.  It works with jQuery and (for those of you who are into that sort of thing) strophe.js .

I would really to hand over my work to the greater community, in particular to people who (a) own a Windows-based computer, (b) know anything about IE, AJAX, and/or public-domain software, and (c) enjoy, or at least don't despise, investigating and redressing Microsoft shortcomings, a group of people that does not include me.

Any suggestions are welcome.