Well, I can’t believe it’s taken this long for me to start on a project using Ajax, but I finally got the opportunity with some new reporting changes at work.

If you don’t know what Ajax is you should just go read the Wikipedia entry above, but basically it’s a way to make changes to a page without having to reload the whole page. Think Flickr. Think Gmail. The whole application that I work on deals with presentation of data in large chunks, so the ability to use this technology is going to make for a much better user experience. Plus, it’s nice to be starting with something new. If there’s anything I hate, it’s feeling stagnant, which is why I try and do side projects whenever I can, but I’ve been pretty busy with life lately, so not much time for side ventures.

One thing about Ajax is that it can be a pain to set up, and a pain to debug when things don’t go perfectly. Thankfully people have already put out some code libraries to help speed Ajax development, and Microsoft is going to be including something in their next version of ASP.NET.