I've heard of Mootools mentioned around here. It goes up against jQuery and Prototype right? I feel like there's so many things out there, it's kinda overwhelming so I'm trying to take things one step at a time..

What is JSON? And if Mootools is a framework, does it go up against scriptalulous also? And what about joomla?

Sorry, for throwing out a lot of names...

Also one more thing, I assume that mootools can do the greybox effect? I'm not sure if that's the correct name of it...but it's when you want to view images and the whole browser becomes gray and the image appears in the middle, and it has that animated look...


Oh and one more thing...

Where can I learn the proper procedures for utilizing the "ajax" loader...




Is it normally used when you're querying a DB and waiting for a result? I've seen this around so much and have never really looked into it...

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!