ThinWire™ Handbook: A Guide to Creating Effective Ajax Applications

Chapter 1. Introduction to ThinWire

As you might be aware of by now, the term Ajax sprung onto the Web development scene in 2005. One could even make the case that the concepts behind Ajax have taken hold faster than any other paradigm shift in Web development since the inception of the Internet. The reasons for this explosion continue to be discussed; but whatever the outcome turns out to be, the fact is that Ajax has and continues to transform Web development in ways unimaginable previously.

Suddenly, it has become trendy and acceptable to hack the browser and make it do things that it was never intended to do. Interestingly enough, the vast majority of the concepts behind what we now call Ajax go back to as early as 1997, when Microsoft released ...