Cool Technologies: AJAX, SVG, XFORMS.

So I have been wanting to learn more JavaScript and how to do Ajax for a long time now. Last semester I finally found some time to play around with enough JavaScript to start to understand it. This was the first time I have ever worked with DOM. While on winter break I had some free time one night which I decided to spend doing an Ajax tutorial. This was a simple tutorial which used a mouse over to request the time from the server.

Next I decided to add an Ajax feedback form to my website which turned out to be a little more challenging. The server time tutorial did not use any POST variables. I did not realize that with AJAX you had to send the variables. So after a few hours of reading online tutorials I was able to figure it all out.

I really am liking Ajax so far so I wanted to get a book to teach me a bit more. I ordered Building Responsive Web Applications which looks like it will teach me a lot. I have not started it yet since another semester has just begun.

While reading various articles online I came across SVG and XForms. Both look really cool and I can't wait to get some free time to play around with them!

Stack Overflow's Impresive SEO

I am very impressed by Stack Overflow's ability to rank so high in many searches. I searched for my name on Google and the top results for me are Super User, Stack Overflow, Facebook, and MySpace (which I haven't really used in years). Following them all up is my own site. I have been trying for years to get my site to rank high but it can't get much high as long as I'm active on Stack Overflow.

I realize that search engines will always rank Stack Overflow highly because of the large amount of constantly changing content. At most my site only gets updated a few times a month. But it seems that someone (I think possibly Jeff Atwood) has dont a very good job with the SEO of Stack Overflow.