Bittersweet AJaX

By now, everyone knows what AJaX is.

I’m personally a bit bitter about the name, just because I thought to myself in January 2005: “self, there is a lot of hype going around about Google’s ‘new’ approach to DHTML using microrequests. Since you’ve been doing this sort of thing for over 5 years now, maybe you should write up an introduction to the technique and it’s evolution. (As early as 1999 I used similar techniques with pop-up windows, complete with CSS progress bars, and hidden frames to make “microrequests” to a server without reloading a page, or even to coordinate interaction between two servers via the client browser.) If you came up with a catchy name, I bet it’d catch on and we’d get our 15 minutes of fame.”

Well, my self responded in the usual way, replying “that’s a great idea! I’ll add it to the to-do list, and next time I experience that mythical ‘boredom’ I’ll see to it.”