So, long story short, I work as a database and web software developer for a school, and our entire existing administrative software package makes use of terribly outdated ActiveX programming that only functions in old versions of IE. I'd like to update it to a more...relevant...standard, so I want to get a handle on AJAX development using likely both LAMP and ASP.net/MSSQL environments.
Anybody out there that knows of a good place to get started in self-training? Online tutorials, books, I like to go on recommendations because there's so much useless crap out there to sift through, otherwise.
#2
Necronic
Don't know much about Ajax but I ran across this statement on wiki while I was looking it up:
Ajax-powered interfaces may dramatically increase the number of user-generated requests to web servers and their back-ends (databases, or other). This can lead to longer response times and/or additional hardware needs.
This seems like something that would be detrimental to a database driven page, on the other hand GMail runs on Ajax so I dunno.
#3
Sara_2814
When I was learning PHP & MySQL, I started with the Visual Quickpro Guides (they are very tutorial centered and I learn best by doing rather than just reading) and then used the O'Reilly books for more advanced concepts. I really haven't found online tutorials that are as thorough or helpful as the books. I recommend getting a subscription to O'Reilly's Safari Books Online, which also carries the Visual QuickPro series (and a lot of other publishers).
You may also want to check out jQuery, which can add a lot of functionality through plug-ins and is incredibly easy to use (for the most part -- some developers aren't very good at documentation). That will give you AJAX without having to become a Javascript programmer.
