There’s plenty of Ajax help on the Internet, ready to give you all sorts of information and advice. You can find a good list of Ajax resources in this post, including the Web address for the original article by Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path that started the whole Ajax juggernaut going. You can also get wrapped up in any of the Ajax blogs and discussion groups that I introduce here.

Don’t forget, this being the Internet, that URLs can change without notice.And also keep in mind that the Ajax phenomenon is still exploding — more sites, frameworks, and discussions are appearing all the time. Keep in touch with the Ajax community online — there are great days ahead.

The Original Ajax Page

www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php

Yep, this is the big one, the original Ajax page where Jesse James Garrett coined the term Ajax. This article, named “Ajax: A New Approach to Web applications,” even includes a nice picture of Jesse. Although some people have noted that all the technologies involved in Ajax were in use before this article came out, the article, nevertheless, focused vast amounts of attention on Ajax and what it could do.
Adaptive Path says, “Since we first published Jesse’s essay, we’ve received an enormous amount of correspondence from readers with questions about Ajax.” You can find a question and answer section at the end of the page where Jesse answers some of those questions.

The Ajax Patterns Page

The Ajax Patterns page is a great Ajax resource. Patterns refers to best programming practices, and there’s a lot of discussion on this site about the topic.

In addition, this site has a great page of links to Ajax examples (http://
ajaxpatterns.org/Ajax_Examples) and to the various Ajax frameworks
available (http://ajaxpatterns.org/Ajax_Frameworks). In Part III, It explains many ways in which you put these frameworks to use.

In my view, the interactive discussion and huge number of resources help make this the best Ajax site available anywhere, bar none. Take a look!

The Wikipedia Ajax Page

Wikipedia’s Ajax page is also a great resource. Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia, and this page has an in-depth discussion with many links on what Ajax is (and isn’t).
This page has one of the best all-around Ajax overviews you’re going to find anywhere, including not only a discussion of what Ajax is good for, but a discussion of problems — in other words, both the pros and cons.
And you can also find many links to Ajax resources of all kinds, from Ajax examples to Ajax frameworks.

Ajax Matters

www.ajaxmatters.com/r/welcome

Ajax Matters is another power-packed Ajax site, currently updated all the time, on all things about Ajax. It’s great for all-around Ajax topics of any kind.Here’s a quick list of what you can find:

1.Headlines on new product releases
2.Links to books, example sites that use Ajax, and resources that Ajax developers need, such as JavaScript references
3.Frameworks
4.Articles
5.Discussions

XMLHttpRequest Object References

Where are the official references showing how to use XMLHttpRequest objects in the various browsers? You can find the official references for each browser, listing object methods and properties at the following sites:

1.Internet Explorer: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/
default.asp?url=/library/en-us/xmlsdk/html/
7924f6be-c035-411f-acd2-79de7a711b38.asp

2.Mozilla (including Firefox) and Apple Safari:
http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/xmlhttpreq.html

Ajax Blogs

A handful of Ajax blogs out there have a lot of great Ajax commentary. Here’s a list of some of the better ones:

1.http://ajaxblog.com
2.www.ajaxian.com
3.http://weblogs.asp.net/mschwarz/archive/2005/11.aspx
4.www.robsanheim.com/category/software/ajax

Ajax Examples

Sometimes, nothing helps more than seeing what you want to do already done in an example. And there are plenty of examples available for you. For instance, a very simple example showing how to get started with Ajax is available at

www.openajax.net/wordpress/simple-ajax

You can find two of the best lists of Ajax examples at these URLs:
The fiftyfoureleven.com list of Ajax examples is at

http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com/resources/programming/xmlhttprequest/examples

Ajax Pattern’s list of examples is at
http://ajaxpatterns.org/Ajax_Examples

Ajax Tutorials

There are a number of Ajax tutorials available on the Internet, but most of them deal with using specific Ajax-enabled frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails. Here are some good general-purpose Ajax tutorials not tied to a specific framework:

1.A “30-second” Ajax tutorial
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-general&m=112198633625636&w=2

2.This tutorial uses PHP:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/kassemi20050606.php3

3.This tuorial builds a tree of nodes, whose text is downloaded as needed:
http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/ajax_treeview.asp

Ajax Discussion Group

http://groups.google.com/group/ajax-world

If you’re looking for interactive Ajax help, check out the active Google group discussion on Ajax.

This group is a good place to go to ask questions and receive answers about Ajax. No matter how complex the question, there’s probably someone on this group that can offer a few suggestions.

More Depth on XMLHttpRequest

http://jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html

Here’s a site that has more information on how to use XMLHttpRequest objects and goes into more depth than the usual Ajax page.

You can find many sites that give you the Ajax basics, but sites like this one, which go deeper into the topic, are very useful when you’re ready to move on from the preliminary discussions. This site includes how to use Head requests and much more.