It seems in theory that it should work. In practice the AJAX I've seen makes the perceived experience worse. There was a thread about Github latency a few months ago, and they use AJAX heavily in the source browser to hide latency, but it just seems janky to me.
I would be interested to hear if anybody is using AJAX to make very light sites that are accessible in Siberia and the places mentioned in this article. I can't really think of one. I'm sure it's possible though.
FWIW this is why craigslist is universally popular. Because you can use their site from the public library with IE5 from a dialup connection! When you're trying to overcome the chicken and egg problem of community sites, that extra population is probably pretty important.
I would be interested to hear if anybody is using AJAX to make very light sites that are accessible in Siberia and the places mentioned in this article. I can't really think of one. I'm sure it's possible though.
FWIW this is why craigslist is universally popular. Because you can use their site from the public library with IE5 from a dialup connection! When you're trying to overcome the chicken and egg problem of community sites, that extra population is probably pretty important.