So I'm going to be making the plunge into AJAX for HelpSpot. Now that I've been using HelpSpot myself for about 4 months I can see some very useful spots for it. I'm really glad I waited BTW and not just threw some in just to say I had it. I've managed to sell plenty of installations without it (can you believe it!) but also I'm going to be adding it where it will really improve the experience based on facts not on speculation. I think it's important to note that before launch I would have added it in different places and in a different way then I plan to now and I would have been wrong, it would have detracted from the experience IMHO.

Now, I'm going to be rolling it into the 1.1 feature release (I think) probably sometime in Jan/Feb. I'm currently researching libraries and am curious what you all have used and if you have any suggestions. HTML_AJAX seems to be making some progress, but it's still early and I know they keep changing some of the API. I'm not a big fan of most of the bigger libraries I've looked at because they seem to do to much. Most of the features they add I will never use. My current thinking is to use the prototype.js library directly. This way it's light weight and it's only JS I have to worry about. No other foreign PHP code is added to "help" me. Plus I can easily layer script.olicio.us on top if I need more fancy effects down the line. I don't really give a hoot about convenience (though prototype does make things pretty convenient), I care about speed and stability only. Thoughts?

Oh, if anyone was looking, there is some OK documentation on prototype here. That's probably my biggest concern with it is that the developer provides no docs at all.