Ajax and MS

Thanks to the patient explication of Jesse James Garrett, we now have a name for the bundle of technologies that make this generation of Web-based applications feel more usable than their predecessors: "Ajax," an acronym referring to "Asynchronous Javascript + XML." All you really need to know is that this stuff makes it possible for Google (as well as a few other innovators) to design Web services where stuff happens very fast on your screen without your having to wait for the browser to send a request back all the way across the Internet to a server, and for that server to send some bits back to you. With Ajax, this all happens via services that are already built into your browser, rather than insisting that you wait while Java takes its long march into your browser window -- or that you open your computer up to the myriad vulnerabilities created by Microsoft's approach to building Web applications.