Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with web and HTML

Which HTML/CSS/JS IDE do I want?

drjimmy11 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:31:52 -0800

Which HTML/CSS/JS IDE do I want? So I've been doing AS3 development for the last few years, using Flex Builder, but am now moving back into HTML/CSS/JS. I've gotten used to having a fairly intelligent IDE and I'd like to not go back to the bad old days of having to type every single param and property from scratch every time. (I'm looking for code help, not just highlighting.)

I have tried a few but none seems to have everything I want:

1. Dreamweaver:
Pluses: When you link to a stylesheet, you can CTRL+space and get a list of styles to choose from.
Minuses: Weak support for JS. (no auto-complete at all)

2. Aptana:
Pluses: Seems to have excellent JS support, including major AJAX libraries.
Minuses: Unless I am missing something, I can't choose Css styles off a list, and that is a major major timesaver for the work I'll be doing.

3. HTMLPad 2010:
Plusses and minuses seem about the same as Aptana, plus it costs money. (DW CS3 is already installed on my work machine so no cost there.)

So, am i doing something wrong with Aptana? Is there another piece of software I'm not aware of? Or should I settle for DW for html/css and Aptana for JS? (The work will probably be 80% or more on the html/css side.)

thanks!

Need money now thankyou.

drjimmy11 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:50:15 -0800

What are some good tech-centric temp agencies in L.A.? Hi! Yet another in my long series of job-trauma questions.

I'm currently between jobs- I'm a web/software developer, specializing in flex/AS3 but with years and years of doing html/js/ajax/php type stuff too. I have a pretty strong resume, I like to think, going back about 10 years.

I'm currently getting contacted by a lot of recruiters and going on a lot of interviews, but it's a very drawn-out process. Basically I need a gig to bring in some money now- cutting up PSDs or whatever is fine, I'm not proud at this point. I'm curious if anyone knows any decently reputable agencies who could get me something like this soon. Specific names of agencies are appreciated, referrals to specific people are even more appreciated. (meMail me if you like).

(I'd also be interested in where I can advertise myself as a flex freelancer, but I'm more inclined towards W2 right now for a few reasons.)

Thanks!

How does HuffPo append URLs to copied text?

eyeballkid — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:05:39 -0800

I noticed today that text copied from articles on The Huffington Post appends the article URL when pasted and I'm wondering how it's done. Here's an example of copying and pasting text from the current front page story of the G20 meeting:

The three leaders, in their dramatic joint statement that overshadowed the G-20 economic summit here, hoped the disclosure would increase pressure on the global community to impose new sanctions on Iran if it refuses to stop its nuclear program.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/25/obama-iran-has-secret-nuc_n_299556.html

The "Read more at:..." portion never appeared on the page.

Repro steps:

1) Copy any random paragraph from a HuffPo story.
2) Paste elsewhere.

I'm using FireFox 3.5.3 on Windows 7. I don't see this behavior when copying from other sites.

Turn on, tune in, log out?

telegraph — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:27:55 -0800

Webdev filter: What tools can I use to avoid developing a registration/log-in feature from scratch? I'm an amateur web developer -- I took a few programming classes in college (Java), know HTML and CSS pretty well, and can get by in PHP and SQL, albeit while checking references constantly. I'm trying to build what I think should be a pretty simple web application: the nuts and bolts of it are that it should allow member registration and login/out, and while the user is logged in, s/he can input numerical data, as well as view some statistical juggling of that data.

The data entry bit I feel fairly confident that I can do using PHP/MySQL. I've written a rudimentary registration and login system (with an email confirmation message, etc), but I can tell that it needs a lot more features and even though I am mostly n00b I can think of ways it could be compromised -- if at all possible I'd prefer to just use code that is already written and known to be fairly stable.

Is there a pre-built, standard kind of thing (I don't even know what the proper word to call it is) I can use for this? I think that Ruby on Rails could be used here, but my attempts at teaching myself how to use it have been kind of futile, and I don't really need all of the version control and other features like that. I'd like to keep this really really simple, at least for now.

As you can see I'm not very experienced and don't really know the proper terms are, so let me know if I need to clarify anything. While I'd like to learn other languages in the future, my goal is to get this thing up and running so I'd prefer advice that presupposes PHP use as opposed to telling me to go learn Python (though I guess I understand if that's the only option). Thanks.

Easy, free way to create a single form-editable web page on my static HTML site?

ManInSuit — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:18:44 -0800

Easy, free way to create a single form-editable web page on my static HTML site? I run a pretty simple web site that I edit myself using Dreamweaver.

There’s a single page on the site that I’d like to be able to have a friend update/edit periodically. The page being edited is a really simply page- no fancy layout or anything.

I’d like my friend to be able to do this editing without having to download any tools or learn anything too complicated– just do it through a web page.

Is there some way to do this that’s free, relatively easy to set up, and easy to use?

I’m imagining something like a free online WYSIWYG html editor that can do FTP. Or some sort of free hosting/blogging service that lets you export pages to another site. Or maybe some clever hack I haven't thought of...

Any tips, ideas, much appreciated.

Help me get the Wordpress audio player plugin to work? Please?

hifiparasol — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:19:35 -0800

I'm having trouble implementing the Wordpress audio player plugin on my website. Please help a baffled man. I've installed the Wordpress audio player plugin on my website, but for the life of me I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong -- it's not showing up on the page.

I'm writing the page using the "html" setting on the wordpress control panel, and I'm following the instructions listed under "usage" in the 1pixelout link above. The file I'm trying to play is definitely in the folder I'm directing the player to (I'm hosted, it's not just a WP blog); I can link to it conventionally (as in, without the player).

The only change I made was to change the audio files directory path from "/audio" to "/uploads." I've even tried checking the box (in the audio player controls on my WP control panel) that replaces all links to mp3 files with a player instance. Didn't work.

Can someone help me out here? I have a feeling there's some extremely minor thing I'm doing wrong, so don't think I'm too foolish. Thanks.

How do we make web-based scheduling available to patients?

blueberry — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:31:48 -0800

Looking for a way to allow people to schedule their vet appointments via the web. My friend is setting up an animal acupressure business out of her home. While she is like Dr. Doolittle when it comes to animals, she's like John McCain when it comes to HTML.

We want to set up a pretty basic web site for her: main page, FAQs page, maybe a page with how-to-get-here directions... however,

here's the gist of the question:

She would like to have a page with a calendar so that people can see appointment availability and also make appointments via that same page (that is, say a client sees there's an opening from 2pm to 6pm on Tuesday, so they click on something and then are able to make an appointment from 2–3pm). The calendar could show a month or a week at a time, but would need to have a "next week/month" and "previous week/month" so people could schedule weeks/months in advance.

Once clients filled out the "schedule appointment" form
(which would ask for [day/time], name, phone number, email address)
and clicked submit, the schedule calendar would be updated so that that block of time would no longer be shown as available for other people to make appointments.

If it matters. there are only two durations of appointments that would be needed: 90 minutes for new clients, and 60 minutes for previous clients. It would be nice if she could somehow tell the scheduling software that after a 90-minute session, she'll need 30 minutes to take care of all of her notes (so she would be unavailable for other appointments), but maybe that's too intricate and she'll just have to book 2-hour slots and then tell the people that it'll actually only be 90 minutes in-office.

Finally, there are two forms that new clients need to fax in before their appointment (an intake form about their animals various info, and a form that just needs the signature of their veterinarian). I was thinking that it would be good to have an automatic confirmation email go out right after the person makes their appointment—the email would say hello, list their appointment date and time, and include a reminder about the need to fax in the two documents.

Is there some sort of web plug-in or something out there that can do this calendar-scheduling this for her?

Right now she has no web page, so if your suggestion requires something specific ("...Such-And-Such requires that your web host be running Apache v4.3 with the retro-encabulator and prefamulated ammulite..."), please let me know so we can choose the proper hosting place.

Also, she's on a Mac, so if you happen to know of any WYSIWYG web page builders out there that would allow her to easily set up something like this on her own, please throw those suggestions my way too.

So just to recap: web-based calendar/scheduling program that she can embed in a page and doesn't need to touch or fiddle with—just look at to see her schedule.

Thanks in advance!

A Tool To Convert HTML to something importable into WordPress?

eustacescrubb — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:16:46 -0800

Need a tool to help me convert html files to something I can import into WordPress. I am converting a client's site to be run by WordPress. She has hundreds of articles, blog entries, and podcasts that have to be imported. But the site was manually managed and updated, so there is no current database. Am I looking at hours and hours of soul-crushing tedium? Or is there a handy tool that can parse through the pages, grab the content, and convert it to a WordPress-friendly import file?

I'm on a Mac, and have BBEdit; using Find/Replace hasn't proved helpful, because each page is slightly different.

Why my design sucks? I can has better design skills please?

Meatbomb — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:15:14 -0800

Three part question about "professional-looking" websites. 1. What makes a website look "professional"? It's hard for me - I know it when I see it, but at this point it is something ineffable and I need people more technically competent and with more refined knowledge of aesthetics / layout / design to spell this out.

2. Why does my business website look unprofessional or amateur? I won't link, but it is the "Modern Institute" site recently posted into projects. I want it to say "these people are online professionals", and right now it doesn't.

3. Why does my own judgment seem to change so radically over time? When I first create a new design / layout / color scheme / whatever, I'm all "ooh! it looks so PROFESSIONAL!!! I am design KING!!!". Now when I look at it, weeks or months later I am embarrassed that this is the image my organisation is providing to the Internet, and I feel that it looks like it was made by a 6th grader just learning HTML.

I can't afford professional services, I need to just rely on my own work here... please, help me make this look better? And tips that will help me in the future?

I sincerely thank you in advance for your time in this regard.

1) web-site idea, 2) ??? 3) The Awesome

indiebass — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:52:23 -0800

Can the hive help me get a web site started? I have very specific ideas, but I'm a dinosaur when it comes to everything about the insides of websites. Back in the day when I set up a website, it was the late 90's and everything had to be coded by hand and ftp'ed to someplace. I realise we are in the 21st century and there are much easier ways to go about things.

I already have a domain purchased. What I want to make is a site that is very similar to the old Pajiba setup: graphic banner across the top, assorted goodies in one or two side columns (probably just links in one, at this point) and a main area in between. The idea behind the site is that I'll be reviewing things, but they won't necessarily be new things. That is, whatever my netflix might be, an album I listened to... things like that. So in the middle I'd like to have a photo, a title and one sentence, where you can click on the title and it takes you to a separate page that is cataloged as http:www.mydomain.com/review_title.html (or whatever) and looks like the front page, except the middle bit is just the extended article.

Further complicating things, is that I wanted to set up the website with free hosting, if possible, and if I actually start generating traffic outside my immediate circle of friends then I'd think about buying some space/bandwidth.

So how do I even start? I know you can use a unique domain name with, like, blogger - which is free - but do they let you structure the workings of it like I want to? (the title-link deal to pages behind the page) I feel confident that I would be able to make the page look like I want it to, it's more the workings and the hostings that I am unsure about.

I've put off asking this question out of embarrassment for a couple weeks, because of the n00b-ishness, and I've really tried to navigate it on my own, but put in "free web hosting" into the google and it's like the internet punches you in the face. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

How much should I expect to pay for someone to create me a simple two page website and where is the best/cheapest place to host it?

davidstandaford — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:03:50 -0800

How much should I expect to pay for someone to create me a simple two page website and where is the best/cheapest place to host it? I have an idea for one of those simple one word website and since I know just enough web stuff to end up messing it up I would rather pay someone to do it for me.

The url of the website will be a question and the first page of the site will be a one word answer (with a link to an external page) and at the bottom of the page it will say "more", with a link to the second page.

The second page will contain one or two sentences explaining the website and an archive of all of the pages that the one word answer on the front page has linked to.

There will also be a basic free tracking service that I would like them to set up on the front page.

How much should I expect to pay someone to create this website? I will provide them with a log-in for the site that I have hosting on and the text (html) for the two pages.

What is the best (cheapest) place that I can find to host this, assuming it is a tiny website that gets a small amount of traffic. Preferably, I would like a site that will also handle domain ownership, as I have not bought the domain yet, but it is still available.

I would like to update the website nearly daily, changing the site that the one word answer links to, and adding that new site to the second (archive) page. Basically, however the site is set up, if I have the html for the those two pages, will I just be able to make the changes on my local copy and then upload it/ftp it to the site?

This is a political site for the US election... should I be concerned at all about potentially hiring someone to make this website who has strong opposing political views. Would it be good to be upfront about the political aspect of the site and which side it is for?

I don't know anything about website security... is such a set-up (two pages) likely to be a secure set-up, or is there a bunch of other steps I should take to make sure this isn't hacked/corrupted by spammers or something.

Is there anything else I should be aware of when trying to hire someone for this type of project?

How to fix a website and make it compatible in firefox AND IE?

bigcheesegump — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:09:18 -0800

I need some help with a CSS/HTML issue as well as an Internet Explorer issue. I created an online portfolio and have been trying to update the design to make it more user-friendly and more aesthetically pleasing. However, I have run into a few road blocks.

This is the new design that I would like to implement. If you are using Firefox, you should see it as I see it. However, if you are using IE, it is a mess. What can I do to stop this? From brief research, it looks like it is an issue using the position:absolute style tag in my css file. Is there a way to make that design work for both IE and Firefox.

Second, if you navigate to this page you will notice a pdf file that is truncated in height. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is causing this. (The other pdfs on the web site are not configured correctly and I am aware of this)

Any help in figuring out these problems would be appreciated. Thanks!

CSS, JQuery, PHP and Caching: Best practices?

odinsdream — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:29:50 -0800

CSS, JQuery, PHP and Caching: What are the best practices for creating dynamic CSS with JQuery and PHP? Examples inside. I'm using PHP to dynamically create links and their associated CSS. I'm doing it dynamically because the number and positioning of these links is dependent on the selected month.

PHP inserts these CSS declarations into the HEAD tag. This seems to work fine on Firefox, but IE apparently caches the HEAD tag. This is a problem when navigating to pages for other months since the number of days will change.

Since I'm also using JQuery for the first time in this project, I wonder if I wouldn't be better off setting the CSS with that, rather than with PHP. The problem with this would be that I'm now mixing math and functions between the PHP sections of the site and the javascript sections. Is there a better way?

An example can be seen here. Source code for the same is available here.

The hover links over each day in each graph are created with a PHP loop based on the number of days in the month. The CSS to position them properly above each day is also created with a PHP loop.

The problem arises if a user selects an old month with a different number of days. Since IE caches the head tag the user only sees 20 day hover links, rather than 30 or 31.

Online documentation, tutorials or book references are very much welcome. Also, if I'm just completely going in the wrong direction please let me know.

Cheaper alternatives to Adobe Contribute?

Idcoytco — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:29:07 -0800

What is the best way for someone without HTML knowledge (and no wish to learn) to make simple edits to an existing website? We used to use Adobe Contribute -- are there cheaper alternatives? I do computer support for a small not-for-profit which has recently moved premises. That meant losing access to the landlord's group licences for software.

Our part-time administrator has been happily using Macromedia (now Adobe) Contribute to update the website with news etc. It supplied a simple way to make updates to ordinary content with no HTML or FTP knowledge. Are there free or cheap programs to do roughly the same thing, for a simple already-existing website?

Search me that flash mr google

Smegoid — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:06:26 -0800

What's the latest wisdoms on flash and search engines (aside from "don't use flash")? Looking for tips geared towards new media sites (collectives, art galleries etc.) Being the most net savy of my group, I got tasked with designing our online portfolio and a site for the art space we co-manage. Did it all in flash as it seemed the thing to do. Despite filling out all the meta content in the html file, we're still pretty blind to search engines (been up since 2005). In particular people are complaining that none of their work shows up when searching for their name. I've poked around to see what the current deal is, and short of not using flash, it seems there's no good way to make yourself visible to the search engines. Anyhow we got out of the gallery business awhile ago, but we'd still like to maintain the site as a sort of memorial.

So anyone with more experience have some tips? I was thinking a text based splash page, or maybe cutting down the site into text based html with flash navigation and movies, etc.

Here's the site www.nestmontreal.ca

As you can see, it made sense to use flash for the look we were going after. But being invisible to search engines really sucks!

Many thanks!

How to link to the contents of another link?

mathis23 — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:24:55 -0800

Is there a way for a hyperlink to simply 'parrot' whatever a second hyperlink might be pointing toward? The overly simplified version of my situation would go something like this:

I have set up LinkA on Page1 to point toward a given file. I also need LinkB on Page2 to point toward this same file. The file however, and it's name, will change quite often.

Is there a way to set up LinkB to simply mimic/mirror/imitate whatever LinkA is pointing toward, so that all I ever need to do is to update the properties of LinkA?

How can I fix my weirdly rendering navigation tabs?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:30:19 -0800

What's wrong with my CSS that makes top the nav render like this or this on some browsers, and how can I fix it? This is an example of a desired rendering, and here's is the CSS. Thanks in advance, guys & gals!

Should I bother learning Dreamweaver CS3?

camcgee — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:32:29 -0800

What workflow advantages have you found with Dreamweaver CS3? I got the Design Premium version of Adobe CS3 a while ago and in addition to the programs that I actually know and use (i.e. InDesign, Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, and Illustrator), I have been wondering whether Dreamweaver CS3 might offer some advantage over my current web workflow.

Currently, I generally do mock-ups in Photoshop then create the site code (HTML/CSS/PHP/JS) using EditPad Pro. I test sites on a dev server running on my local machine and then upload files to the actual servers using FileZilla, since I'm not fond of EPP's built-in FTP functionality.

Has anyone migrated from a similar setup to using Dreamweaver and found real advantages in time saved or ease of use?

My first impression of DW was that it seemed bloated with stuff I don't need and won't use, though I realize that's partly because I'm just not used to using anything other than a text editor.

I'm curious about integrating it with my Photoshop mock-ups as wells as replacing the need for a separate FTP program to actually transfer and manage the files.

I have no interest in the WYSIWYG editor or any of the prefab layouts. The code completion felt intrusive but I wonder if I should just be patient and once I get used to it, I will learn to appreciate it. I'm also wondering about other things that DW can do -- error checking, browser compatibility testing, etc. that might make it more useful as far as consolidating my tools.

One other potential issue is that I'm about to start working on some Perl-centric sites, for which DW doesn't seem to have much in the way of advantages -- syntax highlighting, code completion, etc.

wordpress template is screwed up

clockworkjoe — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:47:28 -0800

Wordpress/web design problem-my custom template is screwed up and I can't figure out how to fix it. Please help. I just started a wordpress site for my blog. I created a custom template for the page. However, while the code is right, the design is screwed up. The sidebar is at the bottom instead of being at the side. You can see it at raillery.tv/blog

What am I doing wrong?

You can see the code here http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2718078&pagenumber=26#post344233403

how to get title and description in Google organic search results

mamessner — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:48:04 -0800

What am I doing wrong in my HTML that the description in Google's organic search just says "Untitled Document?" Check out the HTML for our photography site by going to View:Source at www.vantagephotography.com. I can't copy and paste the HTML here - it doesn't appear. The page has a title that shows in the title bar, and a meta description. When I find it in organic search results in Google (#1 when you search for "vantage photography") it just says "Untitled Document" with no description. Our other site - www.weddingsbyvantage.com - has the same problem. Help! What are we doing wrong? It should have been indexed and cached many times by this point.

An easy-to-change video embed?

johngoren — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:48:25 -0800

Designed a web site for a guy. Short of going whole-hog blog, is there an easy way I can make it so he can log in and change one little YouTube embed (or other bit of HTML) at his convenience? What I mean is, without setting up a blog-style diary or any kind of chronological format...whether there's some tool...almost like Twitter but supporting embedded video...so that he could go in and change a "Video of the Day," without much trouble or without knowing much about HTML.

Retaining form data when going back and still using PHP sessions.

odinsdream — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 05:36:34 -0800

When I altered a PHP web form to take advantage of PHP Sessions, I lost the ability to go back a page while retaining data in the form. Is this the expected behaviour, or is it caused by something else? There are two pages, newentry.php and processentry.php. The first page contains an HTML form whose action is the second page.

The second page does some error checking and alerts the user to go back if something is not correct. I have attempted both javascript:history.back, history.go(-1), and direct links to newentry.php. Before I added Session support, going back to the form returned you to a page with the data still filled in.

Since I added sessions, going back takes you to a blank copy of the form. Is this normal? Is there some other cause I should investigate?

What is the best way to handle this sort of thing? Should I not rely on the first behaviour at all?

Local File Browsing and Viewing Via a Web Interface?

WCityMike — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:08:35 -0800

I'm looking for a file browsing and HTML- and media-viewing interface that can be set up on a Mac OS X machine locally and accessed through a web browser. Remote access not necessary; I'm just looking for a local interface. Basically, I have a number of files -- HTML files, ASCII files, images (mostly JPEGs), PDFs, and movies (I think mostly AVIs, although there's some MOVs, MP4s, SWFs, and RMs). These files are mostly bits and pieces of my life that have gone with me from computer to computer, and I tend to find myself referring to them fairly often.

Right now, I access and browse these files via Mac OS X's Finder (well, technically, via Cocoatech's Path Finder).

What I'd like is to be able to access and browse these files from within the Firefox browser, preferably by setting up some sort of localhost file browsing solution that also has the power to display images, movie files, and PDFs, and to detect the difference between a text file and an HTML file.

I tend to access these files while in a web situation, so the added steps of exiting the browser and navigating through directories is a tad annoying. Being able to browse through the files via a web interface -- even if not actually mounted in a publicly accessible "live" webspace but only on my machine -- would be useful to me.

Fairly idiotproof instructions would be greatly appreciated.

If there are a number of different packages out there that can do this (as I suspect), essentially the qualities I would be looking for would be slickness of interface; the power to display images, movie files, and PDFs, and to detect the difference between a text file and an HTML file; and ease of installation.

Building a URL with a Form via JavaScript?

pzarquon — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:09:23 -0800

Anyone have a JavaScript trick to create a web form that builds a URL to send users to a pre-populated search? I'm trying to build a form that can add various variables to a URL prior to submitting, conducting a search with prepopulated criteria. For example, I'd like the web form to say:

Find: [ ] Widgets [ ] Doodads [ ] Gizmos
Priced: [ ] Below $5 [ ] Below $500 [ ] Below $5000

The equivalent plain, non-trick HTML would look like this:

<input type="checkbox" name="type" value="widgets">
<input type="checkbox" name="type" value="doodads">
<input type="checkbox" name="type" value="gizmos">

<input type="checkbox" name="maxprice" value="0005">
<input type="checkbox" name="maxprice" value="0500">
<input type="checkbox" name="maxprice" value="5000">

But, instead of the form sending information the usual way, selecting the various elements would instead add, remove, or change variables within a URL to which it would send users when they clicked "Submit." For example, changing the above fields would, behind the scenes, build URLs like:

http://www.search.com/query?maxprice=0005
http://www.search.com/query?product=doodads
http://www.search.com/query?product=doodads&maxprice=0500

Users could not select various fields without breaking the URL, but also combine any series of variables available. Clicking submit would finalize the search URL and send them straight to the results. Presume that the receiving site would understand the variable names and values sent in the URL.

This seems pretty straightforward, but I can't find example code to do exactly this. Any pointers would be much appreciated!

Help me AJAXify a portion of my project without overwhelming me.

odinsdream — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 08:41:58 -0800

Help me AJAX-ify a very simple web process in PHP. Links to very simple AJAX tutorials much appreciated. I've been reading up on AJAX technologies for a couple weeks. I've tried out a few, but I am still stuck with taking existing tutorials and modifying them slightly without really understanding behind-the-scenes. That is, I understand conceptually what the tutorials are showing me, but not very much programmatically. I'm fairly capable with PHP and HTML. I can read and write basic Javascript, but it seems like the AJAX technologies require a deeper level of understanding.

Having said that, all I'm really looking to do is rewrite a very simple portion of my project. Hopefully taking this small step will help me better understand what AJAX can really help me do long-term.

I have one PHP script, delete.php, which does an UPDATE SQL statement setting Deleted = True for a given ID, passed via HTML GET from other pages.

This seems like the perfect thing to AJAXify, but all of the tutorials I can find jump straight into Google Mashups, SOAP, JSON, XML, etc. I don't need these yet. What are some very basic tutorials that would help me replace my delete.php script with something more efficient?