HTML and the whole dynamic web-app thing became interesting once a major party deployed a wide-spread application that used asynchronous updates. Wait, let's g

HTML and the whole dynamic web-app thing became interesting once a major party deployed a wide-spread application that used asynchronous updates. Wait, let's go back a little. HTML became interesting once Microsoft implemented an ActiveX XMLHTTPRequest object to enable a web-based Outlook client. It became a stable development target once Microsoft disbanded the IE development team ('we've won the browser war so let's add some features to Word instead') and other browsers (primarily the Mozilla XUL/Gecko-based Firefox) took this de-facto standard and provided a viable alternative to IE with a more-or-less API compatible XMLHTTPRequest object. That IE6 is still the industry standard is a thorn in the eye of many developers (including yours truly), but it has presented Microsoft with enough inertia that they now can no longer dictate how the next generation of browsers is going to behave.