Josh Adams from New Atlanta gave an Ajax presentation to the NCFUG a couple of days ago, covering most of the basics and a few frameworks -- Atlas, Spry, and AjaxCFC. The presentation is 1.5h long and it well worth it for people looking for a good intro / overview. John mentions he mostly uses AjaxCFC and asked a couple of questions I want to address, plus I have a few comments.
First, John asked about the second argument in the _execute function, yes ... that null, hehe. Like the docs say, it has no real use for ColdFusion, but the same JavaScript functions power DWR in the Java World and this argument indicates the class to be executed; the third argument indicates which method inside that class is to be run. The way I have AjaxCFC set up you don't really override any class, you just indicate which method on the CFC you wish to run.
Second, the new log4javascript integration was brought up. If you add debug:true to the config arguments when setting up AjaxCFC, you will enable log4javascript, which by default will pop up a new window and log every single Ajax request, including the responses and errors. As Aaron mentioned, this could eliminate the need for http sniffers to see what happens in the background, nonetheless, I would strongly suggest you use one. Aaron also mentioned other libraries at the end, like jQuery, which I hopefully cover this Thursday in my next breeze presso for the Scottish CFUG.
