function createRequestObject()
{
	var ro;
  var browser = navigator.appName;

  if(browser == "Microsoft Internet Explorer") {
		// on IE, we have to use ActiveX
  	ro = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
  } else {
  	// on every other browser, we can directly create a new XMLHttpRequest object
    ro = new XMLHttpRequest();
  }
  return ro;
}

var http = createRequestObject();

// this function should be called for user input
// it opens up a php page with a querystring of 'action'
// this function could probably be adapted to POST
function sndReq(action)
{
	http.open("get", "ajax.php?action=" + action);
  http.onreadystatechange = handleResponse;
  http.send(null);
}

// the response in this case is formatted as follows:
// object|text
// where object is the id of the HTML element we are going to update
// and text is what it will be updated to
// this could obviously work a lot better with some XML
function handleResponse() {

	if(http.readyState == 4) {
	  	var response = http.responseText;
    	var update = new Array();

    	if(response.indexOf('|' != -1)) {
    		update = response.split("|");
     		document.getElementById(update[0]).innerHTML = update[1];
     		document.getElementById('tEmail').style.borderColor='#ff0000';
    	}
  	}
  	//document.getElementById('TakenOrNot').innerHTML = 'test';
}

/*
// this function should be called for user input
// it opens up the usercheck.asp page with a querystring of 'action'
function sndUserCheck(action)
{
	http.open("get", "usercheck.asp?username=" + action);
  http.onreadystatechange = handleResponse;
  http.send(null);
}
*/

// check for unique accounts
function checkEmail(em,disableBtn)
{
     http.open("get", "common/ajax_uk_email.php?ev=" + em);
     http.onreadystatechange = handleResponse;
     http.send(null);
}