AJAX

I've been doing some reading about AJAX - the term coined for the technology that allows the kind of instantaneous interactivity found on Google Maps and Amazon's search engine. It has been identified as another (and probably the most major) technological advance that will usher in web 2.0, the second life of the internet. I think that as this technology becomes more pervasive on the web, users will expect a continuous, interactive experience. Even now, with the "refresh" based web 1.0, waiting for a video to download really inhibits viewership. With AJAX based tools everywhere, we've got to be thinking about ways to incorporate some of the AJAX features into web video 2.0.

As I understand it, and I am not a programmer by any stretch, AJAX puts an AJAX engine on the user side, as an intermediary between the user and the server. The engine completes simple data change tasks and calls back to the server to get what the user requests. The whole process is asynchronous, rather than the traditional method of user input, call server, wait for answer, download new info. With AJAX, all four stages are going on continuously, so it appears on the user side to be completely interactive.

Food for thought - how do we construct video so that the easy and data light elements download first and play as the heavier stuff is downloaded as you watchh the lighter elements? ORR, how to we incorporate lighter data elements into the video experience? What would that look like?