Actually, I greatly dislike using Flex apps where they don't have something profound to bring to the table. If WordPress switched to a Flex UI, there is no question that I'd be dropping it in a heartbeat. A content management app like WordPress is horribly suited to a Flex front end, the HTML paradigm is very reasonable, and if properly dressed with a bit of ajaxing where needed, far surpasses anything a Flex app could provide without a HUGE investment of time and effort (maybe at all).

I've heard little but good things about jQuery, though I can't say I've tried it myself. I've never build an all-ajax app (can't see the point), so I'm usually more concerned with making little snippets of an existing HTML app more user friendly. Maybe it's little inline server-side validation routines, or a single drag'n'drop form, or some autosave functionality, not not the whole UI.

As such, Prototype and Scriptaculous is about all the futher I've gone with ajax frameworks, aside from some custom glue code of course. I'm sure they're not the best choices, but they're the ones I'm familiar with, and I don't find them lacking, so I haven't gone investigating other options. jQuery would definitely be on the list if/when I do go looking.

Thankfully, you're able to see that the shortcomings of one site isn't the fault of this great technology. Something that you may want to look at is the TacoNite plugin from the jQuery project:

http://www.malsup.com/jquery/taconite/

It allows you to update multiple DOM elements from 1 Ajax call. The example that you gave would be a perfect scenario in which to use it.

Check it out. You'll need the awesome Ajax/Javascript library, jQuery (http://jquery.com) in order to use it. I'm part of the jQuery project team so if you need any assistance, please let me know. As Ben Nadel found out (http://www.bennadel.com/index.cfm?dax=blog:513.view), the jQuery team is very helpful. :o)

Rey

BTW the standard keyboard shortcut within windows for "Close Window" is ctrl F4 – All the other MS apps I've used (Including enterprise Manager) support this shortcut – I'd be interested in knowing whther this works in MS SQL Studio…

Of course, annoying or not, they're not going to make me switch platforms, even if cost didn't weigh into the equation. I was more pointing it out as a general warning. The purpose of doing ajax stuff instead of simple page-based apps is to improve the user experience. But with the benefits comes a new set of pitfalls. With a UI, experience is everything, and consistent is far more important fast.

Whilst I'm sure this is abit of a sweeping statement, it does often seem to be that one of the penalties of using Open Source Software (such as Wordpress) is there is not the attention to detail that there has to be with most commercial applications, particularly when it comes to inconsistiencies (rather than exceptions) within the software.