Update (08/25/2010): There have been quite a few changes in CakePHP 1.3.3 and the Javascript/AJAX engines. (For one you are no longer “stuck” with prototype). Yet, everything in this post is still relevant and I still prefer to write jQuery by hand… Please don’t tell me that you haven’t noticed that a lot of developers have abandoned the built-in AJAX stuff in CakePHP in favor of jQuery. Not to sa