23rd February 2022 edit of original text: "I have decided to resurrect an old idea for a web app, as the need for its existence persists in my mind.

My skill levels are too low, however, to build the idea I have in mind, so I find myself once again with my nose to the grindstone. At least it's cold outside.

I want to be able to use AJAX to update my pages with info from my database server, so it seems I need to be using XMLHttpRequest, either directly or via some library or other. This article will be updated every day or two as I follow what I hope will be the shortest route to AJAX mastery. I have no time to waste, so I will be considering each step carefully, and regularly asking myself if the way I have chosen is leading me in the right direction. Focused studies, in other words.

Experts' opinions will be consulted and cast aside, and promising trails will be abandoned as I swing my way through the web app training jungle, switching vines in mid-flight and coming down to Earth with the occasional bump, for sure.

Witness the heartache and frustration, laugh at my inexperience, deride my decisions, sneer at my choices, whilst hopefully learning from my mistakes. Anyone can code. Yeah, right!"

As I said, it is now 23rd February 2022 and I have been studying an hour or two a day. Here is an update: I wrote out a Front-end roadmap, which had HTML, CSS and JavaScript at its heart, but it included XML seeing as how it's used in XMLHttpRequest, I decided to study XML in some depth. It has been a challenge as I decided to go through the material on the W3Schools XML Tutorial, which could have been ordered in a more logical way, I feel. I made over fifty pages of notes and opened up every single example and played around with the pieces. The XML tutorial uses a text called books.xml, which is immediately understandable. The difficulty comes when you try to grab elements in the document - called 'traversing'. To do this quickly, you need to know about the XML DOM, so I studied that in detail, too. The nice thing about studying XML is that, for me at least, it gave rise to several questions about DOM, saving data, how to write a good XML document without redundant information, the JavaScript for()/loop method, DTDs, XML Validator services and other stuff I honestly had never considered studying before. So far, I am happy with my studies and I feel more confident about taking the next steps, after which I will be in more of a position to decide whether I studied the things in the correct order or not. So what's next? XPath, then a quick attempt at XML AJAX, again on W3Schools. If studying AJAX there leaves me confused I'll write another note on here and work out what is hindering my progress. It's going to be a lack of knowledge, of course, but nothing that can't be fixed. By the way, I discovered the roadmap.sh website which has detailed study guides for coders at all levels. I will be using that as a guide also. 27th Feb 2022 update: I studied XPath Predicates and decided it should have been tackled much earlier on. They are the zeros and ones in square brackets. How to select elements suddenly gets clearer after reading up on these. XPath Wildcards ia also an essential early study candidate. The operators for XPath are easy enough to learn for beginners, and worth looking at early on. I decided to brush up on HTML before diving into the AJAX pages, so that is where I am today, and I admit I didn't know about HSL colours, or HSLA and even RGBA, so I already feel justified in restudying HTML in 2022. I think I originally studied HTML with a SAMS Teach Yourself HTML in 24 hours book back in 1999! There are several tags I just learned about: , , . I used my new knowledge today when I updated my personal access token for github, haha. Go on laugh.