A new introductory tutorial over on DevArticles looks to help you get acquainted with Ajax through its use in both PHP and JSP:

This is a two-part article. In these two parts I'll try to describe what AJAX is, and how to use AJAX in PHP and JSP. Later we will use some advanced JSP tag libraries to make cool AJAX-based web applications.

This first part looks at the basics of the connection - the XMLHttpRequest object and a simple example putting it to use grabbing the latest date from a background PHP or JSP script (complete with screenshots of the end result).

A new introductory tutorial over on DevArticles looks to help you get acquainted with Ajax through its use in both PHP and JSP:

This is a two-part article. In these two parts I'll try to describe what AJAX is, and how to use AJAX in PHP and JSP. Later we will use some advanced JSP tag libraries to make cool AJAX-based web applications.

This first part looks at the basics of the connection - the XMLHttpRequest object and a simple example putting it to use grabbing the latest date from a background PHP or JSP script (complete with screenshots of the end result).

In an "interesting" post to The Codist blog, there's one developer's look at PHP and his confession that he'll never quite understand the appeal of the language.

How PHP can be so popular is beyond me; the whole sense of encouraging all of your html, code, bindings, javascript, even sql (as in the below example) into a single file is a nightmare.

He Goes on to talk about his experience with JSP versus PHP and some perspectives on how PHP lacks features he's used to or how other developers he's talked to had similar issues.

One thing that concerns me (and apparently several others in the PHP community) is that he keeps talking about procedural PHP code that's an "all in one page" kind of setup. Well, of course this can get messy quickly - that's no way to code anything, much less PHP. Organization means more than just breaking code up into chunks on your page (though it's a very low-level start). Plus, the sample code he provides is a joke - a PHP developer with a few weeks of experience could push out something 10x better.

In an "interesting" post to The Codist blog, there's one developer's look at PHP and his confession that he'll never quite understand the appeal of the language.

How PHP can be so popular is beyond me; the whole sense of encouraging all of your html, code, bindings, javascript, even sql (as in the below example) into a single file is a nightmare.

He Goes on to talk about his experience with JSP versus PHP and some perspectives on how PHP lacks features he's used to or how other developers he's talked to had similar issues.

One thing that concerns me (and apparently several others in the PHP community) is that he keeps talking about procedural PHP code that's an "all in one page" kind of setup. Well, of course this can get messy quickly - that's no way to code anything, much less PHP. Organization means more than just breaking code up into chunks on your page (though it's a very low-level start). Plus, the sample code he provides is a joke - a PHP developer with a few weeks of experience could push out something 10x better.

According to this post on Marcus Whitney's blog, it seems that Microsoft has been listening to the various other web development communities (PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc) and has started an initiaitive to inform developers about the integration of their favorite language with .NET rather than assaulting them with more ".NET is the way of the future" marketing.

Windows is making a strong play for the server market with their "Cross Training for Developers" program. And look at the co-sponsors: O'Reilly and Dr. Dobbs. Not too shabby.

Oh, and if you dig around on the site you will see tutorials on PHP, Java and Coldfusion. You will also see that if you sign up for three of their webcasts you will get a free copy of Visual Studio 2005, a free book and some other stuff that they don’t tell you about. What better way to fend off the IBM/Eclipse onslaught than start giving away Studio. Whoever said Microsoft wasn’t getting smarter with age was wrong.

It's an interesting tactic, and it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. So far, from what Marcus has said, it seems like a half-hearted effort - but that might just be because it's just getting the ball rolling.

According to this post on Marcus Whitney's blog, it seems that Microsoft has been listening to the various other web development communities (PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc) and has started an initiaitive to inform developers about the integration of their favorite language with .NET rather than assaulting them with more ".NET is the way of the future" marketing.

Windows is making a strong play for the server market with their "Cross Training for Developers" program. And look at the co-sponsors: O'Reilly and Dr. Dobbs. Not too shabby.

Oh, and if you dig around on the site you will see tutorials on PHP, Java and Coldfusion. You will also see that if you sign up for three of their webcasts you will get a free copy of Visual Studio 2005, a free book and some other stuff that they don’t tell you about. What better way to fend off the IBM/Eclipse onslaught than start giving away Studio. Whoever said Microsoft wasn’t getting smarter with age was wrong.

It's an interesting tactic, and it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. So far, from what Marcus has said, it seems like a half-hearted effort - but that might just be because it's just getting the ball rolling.