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Mozilla’s XMLHttpRequest object is in many ways identical to Microsoft’s XMLHTTP ActiveX object. Both can be used to make GET and POST requests from the browser. Here’s a handy tip: in Mozilla, don’t forget to use the little-known overrideMimeType() method if the server is returning anything other than text/xml. Otherwise, Mozilla might lock up on you.


try {
  // for Mozilla
  req = new XMLHttpRequest();
  req.overrideMimeType("text/xml");
} catch (e) {
  // for IE5+
  req = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
}
req.open("GET", "page.html",false);
req.send(null);


With overrideMimeType() Mozilla can fetch standard HTML pages, or just about anything the server would normally not return as text/xml. IE5+ doesn’t seem to have a problem with non-XML formats; probably due to its not-a-bug-it’s-a-feature behavior of ignoring mimetypes. The standard security restrictions still apply; you cannot do GET or POST requests to locations outside the current domain.