Is it true that AJAX existed before the acronymn?

[Mike Cunningham]

I was informed recently by a coworker that AJAX has been around for years and that recently it took off? Any truth to that?

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Yes. The name "Ajax" itself is barely a year old, but the XMLHttpRequest technology has been around for something like 4 years.

[Eric Pascarello]

Been around since IE 5.0

Eric

[Sergey Smirnov]

The cross-browser support is a very important accelerator for any technology on the way to success. Internet explorer was the first browser who introduced it (since IE5.0 like it already mentioned). Currently, most used browsers support it. The turning-point was Google Map. Guys shown that cool application might be made without Flash (ActiveX, Applets, Java WebStart and so on). Actually, many company already provided products using XMLHTTP (like ActiveWidget), but in case of Google Map the audience was huge.

XUL is very promised technology, but cross-browser support issue is an obstacle for it.

For references:
See history of AJAX at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29
See history of XMLHTTP at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHTTP
ActiveWidget - http://www.activewidgets.com/grid/
[ April 05, 2006: Message edited by: Sergey Smirnov ]

[Lasse Koskela]

Ajax has been sold in stores for decades already