Google: How we learned to stop worrying and love AJAX

If anyone knows a thing or two about AJAX, it's got to be the folks at Google. Google apps like Gmail and Google Maps are synonymous with their interactive, AJAX-based interfaces, so it should come as no surprise that the company can offer a little insight on why it took so long for AJAX to go mainstream. According to Google Vice President Adam Bosworth, it all comes down to one factor: speed. "Now you hear about AJAX all the time, but this was built in '97," Bosworth noted, having been on the team at Microsoft that originally developed the technique. What held back AJAX, however, was usability. "In 1997 most modems were 19.2 and chips were 100 times slower than today," he noted, "In short, real apps were hideously slow." While Bosworth's insights may seem mostly historical, there is a parallel to development today--don't overuse flashy technologies, especially if they hamper the speed and usability of the application. As Bosworth notes, "sites where people don't go a lot don't need AJAX-style UIs...If we started building AJAX for AJAX's sake we wouldn't be doing our customers any favors."

For more on the history of AJAX:
- see this eWeek article