If you have been reading the old articles here (especially this one) you will be more than aware of the current situation regarding my opinion of AJAX and all the modern buzz words zinging their way around the net

Despite this, there is no escape from the fact that if you want to maintain any ability to earn an income online – even just pin money from Google Adsense – then you need to keep up with the latest trends. As “industries” go, the web industry is by far the worst for destroying existing skill sets for no apparent reason.

Anyway, enough ranting. This is a normal technology post not a sixteen thousand word rant.

The current situation, is that despite my misgivings and opinion on the transitory nature of the current “buzzword tech” I have been put in the position where I have little choice but to catch up with AJAX and rapidly get to grips with what it can offer. The problem this created is that I truly have NO idea what applications are best suited to AJAX or how to actually add value to a website by using it. I honestly cant find a decent project to use as a learning curve.

Well, this is the internet so off to Google I go. A quick search on AJAX tutorials produces a LOT of hits (as you can see, there were over five and half million when I did it). It seems that there are lots of people not only well ahead of me in the understanding stakes but they also have a lot of spare time to make tutorials….

The good thing about this is that not only does it give me some starting points to learn about AJAX but hopefully it will give me at least a running chance of working out something useful to do with it… Sadly, based on the AJAX implementations I have seen to date, I am not holding my breath about this.

One, very good, thing I feel I need to mention on the subject of AJAX is the wonderfull script.aculo.us site. (Screenshot on the side here). This site provides some basic tutorials (not brilliant to be honest) but the real strong point is the excellent framework they have available for download. Although it is much to early in the days of my learning curve to be completely sure, I still think it is well worth getting to this site and downloading everything they have to offer.

Hopefully, in the very near future I will be able to update you on my learning curves and eventually be able to point to a fully working AJAX site.