In search of web 2.0 via mod_perl

so recently i've been getting my hands wet with web development by working with these technologies: os:unix, db:mysql, server:apache, programming language:axkit,mod_perl,javascript. and although i am able to create some decent looking webpage if i look at them from far enough, i find that most of the webpages that i create lack that certain "cool" feel.

thus i begin my long journey of looking into the current architecture that i'm using and seeing ways on how i can improve on them to make it feel more appealing to the eye balls. and the current buzzword for the day is web 2.0 and of course the first thing that comes to mind is ajax. as i really don't know what the heck i was working with, i've decided to begin at the beginning....

i've looked through mod_perl and after some intensive reading, basically i summarized that it's useful as it digs deep down into apache and you can pretty much do anything you want with apache via mod_perl, but does it helps with making my website prettier? nope. move on.

the next thing that i look into was axkit, which basically according to their website was a xml transformation application server. in short, it takes data chunk in xml files and the pretty dresses hidden in the xsl and combined them into a browser friendly html files, and the only useful thing that i got out of this was that i learn axkit basically will cache some of your transformed files. so that's good, but it doesn't aid in my plastic surgery specifications...

and while looking at axkit, i stumbled upon template::toolkit which seems to be a very hot commodity item right now. think jim carrey in 2008. i was expecting to find something like asp.net 2.0 web templates thingy, but after doing some more reading, i found that the template toolkit basically does the same thing about axkit...

except perhaps with cooler and more flexible syntax, rather reminds me of classic asp.
so i'm thinking after three wrong turns, i pretty much can guess that i'm barking up the wrong tree. but i did found something worthwhile to play with next, and that is the awesome jquery. actually i'm split between jquery and script.aculo.us but since the former seems to be easier to learn and use.

what the heck, let's start with that first.