Ajax and application development

Where was I?
Almost a year ago, I delved into the intriguing subject of Ajax. What was this new fad sweeping the world of web developers and web designers alike? The only thing I knew at first glance was that there was some cleaning product by the same name. The box had a blue color and some red text with a white oblong thrown in behind it. "Stronger than dirt" was the slogan, but to tell you the truth, I never saw my mother use the stuff, so it must've been over-priced.

Back in the day
I'd been into JavaScript way back, but had fallen out of love for it in the late 90's due to the buggy DHTML and horrible browser support. JavaScript almost became a swear word in my vocabulary. Cheesy effects combined with bad graphics moving around a page, and the shear complexity of the coding it took to do the smallest thing just really turned me off and so I focused all of my studies on PHP: the next big thing in my opinion. PHP made sense. Manipulating pages and data from the server was so much better then having to rely on a user's browser to interpret what was going on. The dynamics of it and my background in Object Oriented Programming (OOP) helped to convince me that this was where I wanted to be, sitting behind my computer in an air conditioned office hacking away at code to deliver dynamic web pages. When I figured out you could use databases with this new found love, I became even more infatuated and concentrated even harder. Needless to say, it has gotten me to where I am today, a great job doing what I love and pays the bills.

So where does Ajax come into the picture?
Upon starting my new job at a specialty construction corporation as a technical illustrator, I found they had a need for someone with knowledge in PHP. I had been programming as a hobby for a year or so. Now was my chance to run with it and get paid to do it. In my studies there, always learning more techniques, finding better libraries and whatnot, I happened upon this term popping up everywhere in my frequented sites. Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. AH! It was that four letter... er... ten letter word, "JavaScript"! Run! And so I did.

I steered away from anything having to do with Ajax. But the more I saw it, the more it caught my curiosity. If so many web developers and designers which I had such respect for were throwing out this term, writing tutorials, raving about how great it was and how the future was here, while using Web 2.0 in the same sentences, how could I ignore it any longer?

So again, I studied, and what did I find but a BETTER way to use my beloved PHP! Take the info displayed on a page, send it to my code and just replace a small portion of the page instead of a whole page reload! Awesome! I was in love again, a new passion, and so I studied even harder. Everything that had Ajax in the title was my source of sustenance. I just couldn't get enough. But it still seemed a little backwards with the whole browser compatibility thing. Sure there was that little piece of code to throw in there which got your browser and created the XMLHTTPRequest object accordingly, but that was even a little backwards and a bit of a nuisance.

Then came prototype.js
Eureka! The Ajax passion had worn off a bit now, but with the finding of this gold nugget I was again hooked and began studying to last content this little jewel while implementing it in everything I did. Then, Scriptaculous came along, but was a bit bulky, so I just stripped out the effects.js and used that with my prototype.js and I've been very happy ever since. I don\'t have much Ajax on this site yet as the prototype.js and effects.js love affair has died down a bit, but I have a new one... A particular Content Management System (CMS)! But I'll save those rants for another day, another article.