make an ajax front-end

Anyone have any suggestions for a good open-source javascript library to use for some standard ajax features?

I’m exploring script.aculo.us for “edit in place” functionality…

What about developing a Konfabulator widget that talks to your server? That would be a really cool ajax front-end.

I’m really excited about Ajax and will probably need some prodding to actually devote some time to using it. This is the note I wrote to myself yesterday:

The Javascript XMLHttpRequest object, basically, is technology that enables a page with javascript to send requests back to the server, and retrieve responses, without reloading the page. This lends itself to a nicer and more responsive user-interface and user experience.

XMLHttpRequest has gained a lot of visibility and interest in recent months thanks in part to the unveiling of Google Suggest, and subsequent dissection of its javascript code. While XMLHttpRequest has been available for quite some time (originally as a Microsoft ActiveX object in IE, now a native js object in Mozilla browsers), developers have shied away from, or ignored, or simply not known of it until applications like Google Suggest, Gmail, and some products from 37Signals have proven its reliability and effectiveness. I hadn’t heard of it until two months ago.

Despite the recent excitement about all of this, the vocabulary around this technology/concept has been clumsy at best. A post on the 37Signals blog the other day elucidates this awkwardness: “trying to pronounce XMLHttpRequest around the office has been a challenge. We’ve gone from XMLhr to XRH to That XML Stuff, to No Reload, etc.” Finally, someone has come up with a solid acronym for the concept, which is Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, or Ajax for short.

This article (if you visit any link from this post, visit this one) got me fired up about Ajax, and I hope it helps spur an interest in others. Here comes the future of the web:

The biggest challenges in creating Ajax applications are not technical. The core Ajax technologies are mature, stable, and well understood. Instead, the challenges are for the designers of these applications: to forget what we think we know about the limitations of the Web, and begin to imagine a wider, richer range of possibilities.

I predict that Ajax is going to gain a lot of traction in the coming months (i.e. trade in “web services” for Ajax as your primary buzzword), and web applications are going to have to incorporate it to keep up with the competition. You’re going to see web applications get a hell of a lot more responsive and feel more like desktop applications (tell me Google Maps doesn’t kick everyone else’s ass), thanks to this.