[ecaradec]

But they probably did it by mistake or at least inadvertently. If they had known what would occur they probably won't have done it.

[theycallmemorty]

> But they probably did it by mistake or at least inadvertently.

Agreed.

> If they had known what would occur they probably won't have done it.

Huh?

[shadowfox]

If by "mistake", you mean trying to get a mail client to run well over the web ...

[ergo98]

As someone who was using "AJAX" quite extensively using hidden IFRAMEs and then in 1999, XMLHttpRequest -- long before a Johnny-come-lately coined AJAX, I had to comment on this-

http://www.yafla.com/dennisforbes/How-I-Came-To-Despise-AJAX...

It was first added "to" Internet Explorer by the MSXML team (by a guy sneaking in some functionality for the Exchange Outlook Web Access team). It was actually a great example of the power of modular "ActiveX" (which in that case was abused to mean simply COM) scripting -- they didn't need to release a new browser to support it. Of course there are endless downsides to reusing a plug-in structure that had little controls or security, however it did have some merits.