Keeping up with the latest Web technologies is tough nowadays. Every week it seems new sites are launched that push the envelope further and further in terms of what can be accomplished using just a Web browser.

The rise of AJAX over the past several months has taken over the development world and breathed new life into the Web. Although these techniques have been possible for many years now, the maturity of Web standards like XHTML and CSS now make it a viable alternative that will be viewable by all but the oldest browsers.

It’s also been possible to accomplish many of the same things using Flex or Flash, but the development cycle with those applications is typically more involved and the overhead often not justified.

We’re going to harness the power of the Scipt.aculo.us JavaScript library to provide our interaction. As their Web site states, this library “provides you with easy-to-use, compatible and, ultimately, totally cool JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly, Web 2.0 style.” We’re also going to utilize the <CF_SRS> library to handle the actual AJAX data piping to our application. Both of these libraries are free for all to use, and they’re easier to integrate than you would think.