Hey man i'm new to jQuery too. N00b to n00b =D .ajax is a calls the overall main call used by all the .load, .get and so on. .ajax has MANY parameter so that you may craft an ajax call really specific to your unique use.
.ajax is explained very well in the jquery docs section -> http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax/jQuery.ajax#options Datatypes you can use: * "xml": Returns a XML document that can be processed via jQuery. * "html": Returns HTML as plain text; included script tags are evaluated. * "script": Evaluates the response as JavaScript and returns it as plain text. Disables caching unless option "cache" is used. * "json": Evaluates the response as JSON and returns a JavaScript Object. * "jsonp": Loads in a JSON block using JSONP. Will add an extra "? callback=?" to the end of your URL to specify the callback. (Added in jQuery 1.2) * "text": A plain text string. to pass variables you need to use the "data" option eg . {foo:["bar1", "bar2"]} becomes '&foo=bar1&foo=bar2'. hope that helps, really read http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax/jQuery.ajax#options , it's all there. =]
