In a new tutorial from PHPBuilder.com today, they introduce you to a very handy bit of functionality that can help make working with content on your site a much simpler process - Ajax Edit-in-Place (using Prototype).

Edit in place, like many other Ajax functions, uses the XmlHttpRequest Object to call an external page to send and receive information.

They start with the planning, the layout of how the mini application would work before even getting into the code. They assume that you already know how to work with a MySQL database and have an abstraction layer in place before starting in with the Javascript - echoing out the records (print_records), switching from a div to a textarea (changeClass), putting the content back into the database (save), and updating the page with the new information (update_page).

By the end you're left with a simple, clean edit-in-place that you can drop into any page that uses divs to contain the content.