Posted by Daniel Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:05:44 GMT

The Real AJAX Upside:

People like it because it’s snappy and responsive and lets you do nifty interactive stuff in the browser. But AJAX may be a big enough network-engineering win that the UI sparkle starts to look like a fringe benefit. Herewith some illustrations by example and a snicker at history…

[There is truth to this… but at least for me the change was that the bits and pieces that allow you to build an application that doesn’t live on the server is becoming more possible. It’s more the direction I thought Netscape was taking 1000 web years ago with all that bravura talk about taking down Microsoft (hah). It shouldn’t matter what OS or browser you run (double hah) but I should be able to deliver a nice application to you anywhere in the world.]
Source: Tim Bray