So, now that I’m starting to feel half-way competent with PHP, now I’m noticing that PHP programmers are using this new-fangled thing called “AJAX,” and now I want to do that, too.  Great.  Like I’ve spent so much of my time carefully studying JavaScript and can easily make the transition!

Well, thank goodness that as things develop, people are starting to put out more and more tutorials on the subject.  Right now, I’m just creating the basics of DFE4.0, and don’t have time to spend digging into the finer points of JavaScript, but that doesn’t stop me from occasionally looking.  At A List Apart, they’ve got a great new tutorial that carefully explains one of the more important concepts behind AJAX, which is the idea of “Unobtrusive JavaScript” which is akin to the separation of formatting done with CSS and in fact relies on it:

A List Apart: Articles: Behavioral Separation

Breaking up is hard to do. But in web design, separation can be a good thing. Content, style, and behavior all deserve their own space.

This is good stuff, right here, and you can bet your ass I bookmarked it.  I am thinking that in much the same way as the W3Schools tutorials have helped me with CSS (and continue to do so), this ALA site will probably be the key to my understanding AJAX.  This, of course, along with another recent favourite of mine: the podcasts on “Software As She’s Developed” which are verbose but informative.

Separation of content, style and behaviour is as imperative to webdesign as the separation of Church and State.  Not that this is entirely relevant, but I wanted to end this post on an interesting note. . .  And that was the best I could come up with.

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