I´ve been reading a few articles recently about AJAX and how it all works. It´s a really good idea in that it allows client server interaction without a page refresh in the browser. This lets you code web apps and stuff that can go and get more information from the server and then create more page elements from the retrieved data. There´s a few examples out there that mainly consist of populating form elements based on some other data a user has entered. There´s also Google suggest beta which generates a drop down list of search terms based on what you´ve already typed.
I was sitting around last night thinking about things I could use it for and the number one site that came to mind was our automated reminder system. This has a lot of forms for data entry and a lot of this data is stored and re-used.
An example of this is when you go to send a text message. At the moment it works by having a popup link that opens their contact list and then lets them browse based on the letter their name or surname begins with. This works but has a lot of page refreshes and data sent back from the server. I´m gonna start working on a version that just has a simple text box and when the user types into it it fills in the names in a list similar to Google suggest. This can then be used to insert the ID into a hidden field which means less data is sent back to the server but also puts it in a format that´s more useful.
I´ve never done any AJAX coding before and my JavaScript is generally shit so it should be interesting. If and when I get it working I´ll post up an example and the code if anyone wants it.