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What's Spreading "the AJAX Wildfire"?
An anonymous reader writes "AJAXWorld Magazine is running an article entitled "What's So Special About AJAX?" in which the majority of the contributors agree among themselves that AJAX "heralds a new, global sense of what the web can be and what the web can do, in ways that are so different but so much better than what we have been used to." While many of those the magazine consulted adduced technical reasons for the spread what one of them, Rich Internet Application pioneer Coach Wei, calls "the AJAX wildfire," only two mention how human nature — including that of software developers — is, well, notoriously susceptible to the latest fad. Which side would you agree with?"
Ajax runs on IE; XUL doesn't. That's going to increase its "installed base" by an order of magnitude.
Ajax also lacks an installation step. As far as I can tell you always had to download and approve XUL code before it could run, and sometime requires you to reboot your browser.
Availability is always going to trump elegance when it comes to environments.
The AJAX hype is like the DHTML craze all over again. IMO if you can't create a site using remote scripting without suppressing the urge to advertise to the world that you're doing so, chances are you're abusing the technology. Why should your user base care what the hell technology you're using? It should just work.