For much of this decade, Web browsing has been dominated by Microsoft's
Internet Explorer (IE), which at its height achieved market share numbers
approaching 95%, with the result that Microsoft owned a de facto standard for
the Web and held effective veto power over the future of HTML. During much of
this period, Microsoft suspended development of IE, with the result that
virtually no new features appeared within the world's dominant browser from
2001 to 2006.
But while IE was sleeping, one of the biggest phenomena of the computer age
happened: Ajax. Clever Web developers discovered gold in them there mountains.
Using Ajax techniques, Web developers could create desktop-like rich user
interfaces right in the browser. Not only that, Ajax was evolutionary. Ajax
offered an incremental path from the industry's existing HTML-based
infrastructure and know-how, allowing Web developers to add rich Ajax elements
to an existing HTML page.