'What are full page reloads and Why did we need to do full page reloads without ajax?

I was reading up on ajax and how it empowers us to exchange data with a server behind the scenes and consequently avoid full page reloads. My confusion lies here, I don't really understand what full-page reloads mean. I think it's probably cause I've been working with ajax/react since the start I guess and have not really seen any webpage of mine fully reload when I access stuff from a database or an api.

It'd be great if someone could explain what they are and why did we need them before ajax?



Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source