I love the ideas and such of AJAX. I think it’s a really good idea. I’m looking at a lot of the ways to try to provide seemless updates to the user and think AJAX is the best thus far because it is the most compatible, followed by Flash, then ActiveX (there are actually good uses for it. did you know that?)
My problem comes from integrating AJAX back to my PHP. I have done it, but it frequently becomes messy. This is caused by the problem where I don’t directly interact with my functions and scripts. Instead, i have to pass a variable to specify which part of the script to execute, then any parameters i need. this makes the script get worse and worse as it gets more complicated. I have found a solution though.
SAJAX is the simple AJAX toolkit. It is very impressive. It doesn’t do too much other than make integrating your php funcitons directly into your javascript very easy. That is usually the code that drives me nuts so i guess this is basically a godsend for those like me. You still do all the php work and how javascript will call this, but after that, it takes care of the transaction. it has full debugging functions too (which could be more useful if you overrode them for by default they just will alert when turned on. i would suggest using redirects when someone can’t use AJAX and logging errors silently if a funciton screws up and the like.
In short, i’ve only played with it, but it is my current idea to use this in my template engine. It’s a very useful bridge. If i finish my template with it, i know i’ll be donating. Try it out.