I am trying to get to know the basics of AJAX. I have been looking all over the place on many PHP forums and knowledge bases but all I seem to find are people arguing over the best way to go about things.

Can someone please post a link to a site that offers some basic tutorials to get someone with basic php / js know-how started on the right track?

I just want to update some information on some pages without refreshing , most data is in simple tables.

I want to learn using correct examples. Any recommendations on some good ajax communities? Maybe a 'correct' tool box with some examples? Most sites I saw are more interested in arguing about code than helping anyone. Thanks in advance to anyone who replies.

I heard its easier using Ruby on Rails.

I heard its easier using Ruby on Rails.

I've played a little bit with Ruby on Rails and I like it, however for what I'm doing I really don't have the time to sit down and learn a new language completely (just yet) but in the future I really want to explore it.

I'm used to PHP and JS so I figured that would be the place to go. The gizmo I'm working on is just a simple network monitor using some css graphs. I have some shell scripts collecting data via SNMP and writing the output to xml.

Then I parse the xml files and display the data, along with a little bit of eye candy (the css graph) .. I thought it would be really cool to see those graphs move around as the data changed.

So in the interest of being open minded, I'd love to see some examples using php, ruby or anything else. My main goals are:

* Security
* Cross browser inter-operability
* Resource friendly server side.

I have tested static pages using my css and it works perfectly on every browser.

When I'm done, I'll be making it open source as a 'how to make a quick and dirty snmp monitor that looks cool' article. I want to be sure I've followed all standards so that I don't publish code that isn't right .. and get flooded with e-mails telling me how much It sucks. I realize even though things appear to work, they aren't always 'correctly' written.

Any suggestions for tutorials or some swiss army knife snippets / tool boxes for any language would be appreciated. Thanks guys!

You may want to try http://atlas.asp.net. It is an extension of ASP Net for AJAX.

Here are few links for you:

http://www.rubyonrails.org/docs

http://ajaxian.com/archives/ajax-tutorial-round-up

http://www.maxkiesler.com/index.php/weblog/comments/451/

Thanks to all .. The commnets were really helpful. EVen i was trying to gather some more knowhow about AJAX and all the links are really helpful

Here are few links for you:

http://www.rubyonrails.org/docs

http://ajaxian.com/archives/ajax-tutorial-round-up

http://www.maxkiesler.com/index.php/weblog/comments/451/

The ajaxian link is exactly what I was looking for. Search engines are picking up more and more of those junk article wiki sites that really have nothing of value to offer except keyword embedded content with the same junk tutorial just worded differently.

Its really frustrating trying to find what you want when searching programming topics these days. Stupid internet pollution :(

Thanks for the links !!! :)