Ajax for Beginners

JavaScript has had the XMLHttpRequest object for a good number of years now, but it's really only started getting wide attention recently. All this attention is mostly due to some showoff web applications that make every developer who sees them think, "I want my site to do that!" But it also has to do with the spiffy, spiffy name given to it by the folks at AdaptivePath, who named this asynchronized application Ajax. Maybe you've heard of it?