[wladimir]

So we've gone full circle now.

Phase 1: Everyone has a static page, without JS, but with animated gifs, counters and guestbook scripts linked from other sites.

Phase 2: PHP becomes popular, static sites are suddenly 'lame', as everyone wants to show off their server-side skills. For some sites, even the CSS and JS, and images are generated dynamically on the fly.

Phase 3: Improvements to JavaScript make it possible to replace server side HTML, image and style generation with the same on the client side.

Phase 4 == 1: You don't need Javascript, simply re-generate the HTML and re-publish it on the site using a script. Sites integrate externals widgets, but somewhat less clunky than before by using JS tricks instead of iFrames.

We're back to the 90's :)

[pkulak]

Hell we've even got sites like Gawker re-implementing frames in JS so they can get all that '90s annoying-ness while still telling themselves they're on the cutting edge.