Architecture · 2005–now · Web Boom

Ajax SPAs (early)

Partial page updates without full reloads. Became the mental model for every modern front-end framework.

How Ajax SPAs (early) mutated

Ajax mutated the web from document navigation to application state — then frameworks industrialized the pattern. The fad layer was calling every page an app. The durable win was asynchronous partial updates, now table stakes.

web async ux

Case studies

Digg v4 rewrites the product and the audience — Traffic collapse and sale; rewrite consumed a year of product oxygen
Silverlight and Flash enterprise lock-in cliff — Multi-year rewrites of line-of-business UIs; mobile miss cost market share

2000–2009

Web Boom

Part of the Web Boom era (2000–2009).

Read the Web Boom era →

Compare with

vs jQuery vs React vs MVC web frameworks vs TCP/IP

Framework · 2006–2018

jQuery

Faded

DOM peace treaty for a fractured browser world. Mission accomplished — then frameworks ate its job.

Framework · 2013–now

React

Stuck

Components and unidirectional data. Won the front-end by being good enough and having a gravitational ecosystem.

Architecture · 2004–now

MVC web frameworks