If I try to call $.ajax with a fully qualified url, nothing happens at all:
$.ajax( { type: "GET", url: "http://www.google.com/", dataType: "html", success: function(data) { alert(data); }, error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { alert(textStatus + errorThrown); } }); If I call it without the "http://" the alert in the error function shows "errorundefined": $.ajax( { type: "GET", url: "www.google.com", dataType: "html", success: function(data) { alert(data); }, error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { alert(textStatus + errorThrown); } }); If I call it with the url encoded, I also get "errorundefined" from the alert in the error function: $.ajax( { type: "GET", url: "http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2F", dataType: "html", success: function(data) { alert(data); }, error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { alert(textStatus + errorThrown); } }); All of the examples I see show calling this function with a relative URL, was it not intended to go used to download content from other domains?