Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, better known as Ajax, has helped to revolutionize the way web applications look and has enhanced the usability of these applications as well. Jakob Nielsen, usability guru and principal at Nielsen Norman Group, announced the winners of his firm's seventh annual intranet design contest, and as proof of the improvements brought by Ajax, the technology had a role in making these sites more usable, he says. His intranet design teams applied social networking and wikis in 'restrained ways' that focused on useful information. This resulted in the addition of sophisticated intranet features that successfully communicated each company's culture and met the needs of individual employees better than the systems of the past, Nielsen says. The usability benefits of Ajax re best implemented as 'modest' things like updating a small portion of the screen' when users perform queries. Ajax allows developers to create web applications that can refresh a screen with new data without needing to make numerous trips to the server. This makes for a smoother and more interactive user experience. Ajax basically transforms static HTML pages into responsive web applications. According to Jouk Pleiter, chief executive officer of Backbase, Ajax allows for a true paradigm shift in which presentation logic is moved from the server to the client to create a powerful client-side presentation platform that permit real-time, interactive experiences.