Some of the cool Ajax or Ajax-like (its really a design/interface philosophy than it is a set of technologies as some components are interchangable) applications include

Oddpost
Outlook Webmail
(no coincidence that email applications kicked of webapp 1.0 and now will be kicking off webapp 2.0)
Google Maps
Feedlounge
(Gotta try this, it’ll blow you away)

So Whats Next

- Actually the future of UI design is going to get a lot better and a lot worse at the same time. One of the good thing about traditional web controls was that because the available interface elements was so constraining, it was in fact keeping the UI’s from getting too bad (and too good). Now that product managers and UI designer have almost unlimited tool box to play with, expect the Bell Curve to flatten: a lot of over designed and badly designed web app. (Think Windows applications before Visual Basic) End users are used to dropdowns, radial buttons etc . . . now they have mryiad of “clickable” controls they’ve never seen before. On average, it will probably get worse before it get really really good.

- I’m waiting for someone to produce a definitive book on UI design for WebApp 2.0. It will be a seminal work that create some order out of the chaos that will follow while allowing room for creativity.

- Flash due to its lack of transparency (think XML versus binary formats) will retreat back to multimedia related uses while enterprise and workflow heavy applications will move to AJAX.

- Maybe a couple webapp/WAN acceleration layer 4-7 switch makers will be born to create specific algorithms to optimize the delivery and use of AJAX applications

- Web applications will begin to rival and exceed the functionality of their client/server or desktop cousins. Expect the next webmail version of Outlook to have more functionality, richer experience, more dynamic, and maybe easier to use than the Windows version. I wouldnt be surprised if MSFT tried to charge more for it.

- Ajax will drive innovation in the browser wars. Expect whoever creats a faster rendering browser for AJAX (Firefox?) to gain marketshare because much of the speed/response bottlenecks will no longer reside on the network but on the browser. Perhaps Google will create one and get into the enterprise software industry by getting browsers (or “web application delivery client” ) bundled with major ERP deployments.