Playing with AJAX

I’m not sure I really like this term — but I’ve been doing some design work to play around with this “AJAX” concept. At OSU, we use a product called CONTENTdm as our image repository — however, the software was just recently upgraded an the new api has caused a need to update our interfaces. Thankfully, DiMeMa (the makers of CONTENTdm) have moved to a PHP-based interface — but I’m still alittle concerned that the canned interfaces are still a little to tied to the data. So, I’ve been taking their PHP api and putting an XML interface on top of it. So now, the sight is completely XML/XSLT rendered — and I’m using some AJAX techniques (like working with the XMLHTTPREQUEST object) — to pull snippet of data onto pages. I’m not sure if this is the direction I’ll end of going in the end, but I think that I’m learning enough in the process that it will be worthwhile — no matter where is initial development leads.