See? You knew it was happening: Ajax is making it mainstream. An IT manager at work sent me a link to this New York Times article about Ajax. Okay, maybe the NYT tech section isn’t quite mainstream, but hey. It’s getting there. Even if discussion of specific technologies isn’t happening over the dinner table — and why would it? — the bar is being raised for what people expect out of a web app. This is a Good Thing.

I relished receiving this email because late last year I used Ajax techniques in some work I did for this manager. A small hack, really, but it did something a Certain Vendor said was impossible (and that the vendor then mangled, but we won’t go there). So I could respond to today’s heads-up by saying, “yep, we’re all over that.” And we are, my team has started using Ajax to make small UI improvements, bringing subtle & useful efficiencies to the user experience. It’s quite gratifying.