[TYPO3-english] Customized functionality in BE interface

[Mark Howells-Mead]

Hi all

I'm relatively new to TYPO3 but am learning quickly! I have done a lot of work with other CMS and wanted to know if there's a reference online providing details of how to extended the backend interface and allow custom functions.

The following mockup may help to make sense of what I'm trying to do: http://lockerz.com/s/106677780

What I'm specifically trying to is add a section with four regular input fields and a button next to them. When the editor clicks the button, the values of the fields are parsed and a specific set of information is saved to a separate MySQL DB table using an AJAX request. (The parsing is also carried out by Javascript.)  If the save is successful, a list/table displayed underneath these fields is updated with an HTML-formatted version of the JSON response from the server.

Cheers and thanks for any suggestions!
Mark Howells-Mead