I think that it is interesting that we have had word processors and spreadsheets since the early days of computing and I think those will continue to be the mainstays of computer for some time to come.

I do agree that going forward we will need something more than what is Ajax today – that may be Flex or it may some other web standard.

Also, have you considered that the use of crossdomain.xml might actually be a good solution to cross-domain security issues? This way companies like Flickr and Yahoo can open up parts of their API and have some control over the security of their services. You make it sound like Ajax has no cross-domain issues at all.

There’s also an underlying assumption in your article that Ajax can do pretty much everything that Flex can do. This is far from the case. I agree that with an example like an online Word Processor there is not much difference between Ajax and Flex but this is because Word Processors are based on an ancient UI model. Flex can already support the sort of interfaces we’ll use in the future. Ajax can adequately replicate what we have now.

This is probably not the best example out there but I came across this site yesterday which is well-designed, functional, a pleasure to use and would be not nearly as good if implemented in Ajax (please note – I don’t think everyone should go off and join the navy – I’m certainly not!):

http://navylifestyle.defencejobs.gov.au/

I think using Ajax instead of Flash/Flex is holding the web back. It’s trying to make the browser – which was originally designed to display hyperlinked pages of text – do something which is beyond it’s capabilities. Flash on the other hand is built with interactivity at it’s core. I haven’t even mentioned mind-blowing stuff like Papervision3D. Now if I could only stop people making those bloody annoying Flash intros…