Interestingly enough, the technique was used pretty heavily in a web-based BI software product that I wrote back in 1999. The UI was designed to be responsive a

Interestingly enough, the technique was used pretty heavily in a web-based BI software product that I wrote back in 1999. The UI was designed to be responsive and interactive, and I had to 'invent' a lot of the AJAX-type features and techniques that were later well-known. The problem was that most software back then (including this product) were 'enterprise software', limiting diffusion of ideas.