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Something I also missed was xajax. They use AJAX as RPC layer, calling a server-side method from JavaScript, and in reverse call methods on the clients back. This is easy to implement in existing pages, and leaves much room for implementation.

Instead of parsing data structures in the client, xajax allows you to send HTML chunks, JavaScript method calls and DOM operations back (making it two-way RPC). The most interesting part is you can reuse all server-side code created in the "web 1.0" days, like HTML template engines. :-)

Having been around for IT for a while (20 years) and see quite a few revolutions come and go my sceptiscm with these kind of environments is that although the demo apps always look really good, the trouble comes when you take them out for a stroll in the real world and invariably you soon hit some sort of limitation on implementing something outside what the app was designed to do because the app hasn't been created with sufficient scalability or flexibility in mind. This is easily recognised when you brand-new tool whizzes through the basics as promised in a fraction of the time you would spend hand-coding, but then you loose all that time and more trying to code around the limitations when the going gets tough. Good mature development environments degrade gracefully with increasing size and complexity, poor and often new ones tend to have an asymptotic curve hidding in the undergrowth.

This isn't to say that Web 2.0 isn't wonderful. I'm doing a lot of contracts at the moment recoding old systems into browser-based ones and AJAX and partners are a joy to work with. My workbench at present is a mix of PHP using TinyButStrong http://www.tinybutstrong.com/ templates, AJAX using the xajax framework http://www.xajaxproject.org/, as much CSS 2.x as I can deploy that doesn't break on all common browsers, and whatever javascript widgets that meet the needs.

I can't recommend the two core tools in here highly enough - xajax is really nicely designed and I've only found one bug in it so far (when running a window modal), tiny-but-strong is even better - if you do any coding with PHP and havn't found this yet then you are missing the best templating system yet devised.

There are two other, very active and famous scripts left behind:

1. script.aculo.us : That have many effects include in it and is used in Ruby

2. script.aculo.us : An active library to help for ajax development.

Well,

For Php scripters, if you want to create ajax based web pages, have to look xajax. It was so easy you do not need to know javasciprt.

Template systems have of course been around a while, but I must put in a plug for TinyButStrong - http://www.tinybutstrong.com/ - here. I've been writing PHP apps for some time but after casting around for a template system a couple of projects back dropped on this one. Absolutly brilliant piece of work and I've recently been combining it quite successfully with xajax - http://www.xajaxproject.org/

I've no connection with either of these two projects, just a very impressed user (and the TinyButStrong promotional video is a wee gem :-)

When your site has different requirements, GWT might be the way to go. They certainly know how to please developers with interesting technologies. :-)

I've found xajax to be very powerful and easy to use.