AJAX ( asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is getting some press, based in part probably on Google Maps. The basic idea has been around a little while, using the JavaScript object XMLHttpRequest.

This technology would be fun to use in any web development we do. I thought about using it for the Taxonomic Search Engine, but when I started support for XMLHttpRequest wasn't great. Because of this, I have a horrible hidden frame at the bottom of the screen to enable queries to run in the background and for the results to be displayed in the browser without the page reloading.