AJAX - ColdFusion and Ext

I have been working lately with AJAX functionality, both out-of-the-box functionality available in ColdFusion 8 and additional functionality in the Ext JS 2.2 libraries. My past experiences with AJAX, in particular early AJAX libraries and the inevitable browser incompatibilities they had, turned me off to AJAX as an all-purpose technology. ColdFusion 8 alleviates a lot of those problems by enabling AJAX functionality directly in well-known and mature CF tags like cfinput.

 Behind the scenes, ColdFusion uses the Ext Javascript library, the same libraries that formed the basis for the Yahoo! UI libraries. Beyond that, Ext has a new version that offers significant new functionality to enable very compelling user experiences. Be aware that the licensing model for Ext allows for free use for open source projects, but requires licensing in other cases. Per-application licensing is reasonable, and commercial support is available. 

I plan to spend some time over the next few weeks describing some of the solutions I have worked on using these technologies, including bits that may make it into our upcoming open-source application platform, RoseCMS.