Just when you thought I would never be happy with Ajax, I see there is an article about using ColdFusion with Ajax to produce websites. It seems finding Ajaxian.com was a major step forwards for me. Now, this CFML idea has (at last) fired a few brain cells and provided some inspiration. The article (thanks to Ajaxian.com where I found the link) has the following extract:
This is for ColdFusion aficionados who want to use Ajax. Ajax is implemented in such a way that ColdFusion method calls on the server gets executed using JavaScript a la Ajax. This tutorial shows you where to get the code and how to implement it on your local server.
As you would expect, I will also describe an (extremely simple) to show how the code works. After this the reader may experiment with other samples provided by the CFAjax site. Some of the examples may not work immediately unless the virtual directory for testing is set up in a certain way.
(from http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/ColdFusion/CFAjax-What-it-is-and-How-to-Use-it/)
Now, things are looking up a bit on the Ajax front and hopefully I will be able to dedicate some time to learning / exploring all these new ideas. Shame I have an environmental science essay to hand in soon 🙁