For orgs trying to push the limits of the standard Home tab in Salesforce, using JavaScript is essential. However, trying to pull in the AJAX Toolkit is not as easy as adding a merge field to a new home page component, because merge fields don't work here. Fortunately, making an assumption about where the toolkit resides allows us to create a home page component that's equivalent to {!REQUIRESCRIPT("/soap/ajax/29.0/connection.js")}.
This 1-minute video shows you how to create the component and add it to your home page layout, using the sample code from "Home Page Component: AJAX Toolkit 29.0". The only real "trick" that's needed to make the component work is to extract the session ID cookie and pass it to the sforce object.
Now all of your home page components can be Ajax-enabled.
