http://xajax.sourceforge.net/ For those of you in the dark, ajax is how google dose many of the nifty things it does. Like scrolling maps without page re-load.
Now there is a package for PHP to do this. Anyone played with it?
Some xajax features
* xajax's unique XML response / javascript message-pump system does the work for you, automatically handling the data returned from your functions and updating your content or state according to the instructions you return from your PHP functions. Because xajax does the work, you don't have to write javascript callback handler functions.
* xajax is object oriented to maintain tighter relationships between the code and data, and to keep the xajax code separate from other code. Because it is object oriented, you can add your own custom functionality to xajax by extending the xajaxResponse class and using the addScript() method.
* xajax works in Firefox, Mozilla, probably other Mozilla based browsers, Internet Explorer, and Safari.
* In addition to updating element values and innerHTML, xajax can be used to update styles, css classes, checkbox and radio button selection, or nearly any other element attribute.
* xajax supports passing single and multidimensional arrays and associative arrays from javascript to PHP as parameters to your xajax functions. Additionally, if you pass a javascript object into an xajax function, the PHP function will receive an associative array representing the properties of the object.
* xajax provides easy asynchronous Form processing. By using the xajax.getFormValues() javascript method, you can easily submit an array representing the values in a form as a parameter to a xajax asynchronous function:
xajax_processForm(xajax.getFormValues('formId');
. It even works with complex input names like "checkbox[][]" and "name[first]" to produce multidimensional and associative arrays, just as if you had submitted the form and used the PHP $_GET array
* Using xajax you can dynamically send additional javascript to your application to be run in response to a request as well as dynamically update element attributes.
* xajax automatically compares the data returned from the PHP functions to the data that is already in the attribute of the element you have marked for change. The attribute is only updated with the new data if it will actually change what is already in the attribute. This eliminates the flicker often observed in applications that update content at a regular time interval with data which may or may not differ from extant content.
* Each function registered to be accessible through xajax can have a different request type. All functions default to use POST unless GET is explicitly set. This is to encourage careful consideration of when to use GET requests
* If no request URI is specified, xajax tries to autodetect the URL of the script. The xajax autodetection algorithm is sophisticated enough that, on most servers, it will work under a secure https:// protocol as well as http:// and with nonstandard ports.
* xajax encodes all of its requests and responses in UTF-8 so that it can support a wider range of characters and languages. xajax has been successfully tested with various unicode characters including Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Hebrew
* Nearly all of the javascript generated by xajax is included into your web application through dynamic external javascript. When you view the source of your application in your browser, the markup will be not cluttered by JavaScript function definitions.
* xajax can be used with the Smarty templating system by creating a variable in smarty that contains the xajax javascript:
$smarty->assign('xajax_javascript', $xajax->getJavascript());
Then you can use
{$xajax_javascript}
in your header template to use xajax on your site.
Man I have got to learn this [censored]...
Never knew what AJAX stood for, for thoose who like to know such things like myself...
Asynchronous JavaScript Technology and XML (AJAX)
Here is a link to a Java solution for AJAX.
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2EE/AJAX/index.html