Appreciate the history lesson. And yes, I was there for all of that (though not engaged in Web-app development). One of the first AJAX apps I recall was the o

Appreciate the history lesson. And yes, I was there for all of that (though not engaged in Web-app development). One of the first AJAX apps I recall was the original Gmail. That was a revolution in what the browser could do, followed fairly shortly by others (notably Google Earth which launched about the same time). SPAs simply to deliver relatively static content however seem ... a poor fit. I'll note that HN itself is LLML. Which leaves my original question: what specifically was the selling point of SPAs, or Flash, or early AJAX? Because despite having live through that the emergence was both sufficiently diverse (a number of different approaches) and gradual that I don't have a sharp recollection of what that was.