The OdeToCode guy shares his ideas about what AJAX should not be: AJAX should not be hard to debug. AJAX should not be hard to test. AJAX should not be SmartNavigation 2.0 ( SmartNavigation is obsolete in .NET Framework 2.0) AJAX should not confuse the user. Also on the topic, Peter Bromberg's AJAX rant , advice & code . Microsoft INVENTED AJAX, and its called RemoteScripting. In ASP.NET 2.0, they call it "ScriptCallbacks".