
The birth of AJAX - an amazing story - python_kiss
http://techtracer.com/2007/03/12/the-birth-of-ajax-an-amazing-story/
======
neilc
"Gmail was the first most interactive web based email client which actually
used the XMLHttpRequest to make a rich internet interface providing
asynchronus behaviour thus making the email client more user friendly than any
other in those days of 2004"

Aside from the atrocious writing, it seems to me this is mistaken: wasn't
Oddpost the first web-based email client to take advantage of AJAX-style
techniques?

~~~
paul
Actually, "Outlook Web Access" (OWA) was probably the first, since
XMLHttpRequest was supposedly added for OWA. Gmail was the first good&popular;
AJAX-style webmail client, so it helped legitimize and popularize those
techniques.

------
lupin_sansei
The essence of Ajax is getting Javascript to communicate with the server
without reloading the page. Although XmlHttpRequest is most convenient, there
were other methods of doing this before XmlHttpRequest such as

\- loading a 1 pixel image and sending data in the image's cookie

\- loading server data through a tiny frame which contained XML or javascipt
data

\- Using a java applet to fetch the data on behalf of javascript

------
mynameishere
_Microsoft, because it invented the XMLHTTP object and without Google standing
forth on this aspect, you wouldnt have been able to see any of the above
mentioned miracles imparted to the web today_

That's the most badly constructed sentence I hope to read all day.

