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I didn't think I'd be changing my startup page again for a long time.

Looks like I was wrong. Check out Google Suggest.

Lemme explain why this is so cool. First of all, it saves you keystrokes entering your search terms. That's the externally cool thing.

The internal cool thing is that it's one of the first prominent uses I've seen of the IFRAME XmlHttpRequest technique of going back to the web server for more data while the user interacts with a page. This has been possible for a long long time, but web developers have been mostly ignoring it. Rob Whelan explains how it's done.

The latency of web UIs, in which everything you do is a slow round-trip that requires completely refetching and rebuilding the web page, is one of the reason web UIs feel so clunky compared to native GUIs. Google is very publicly raising the bar on the quality of interfaces that people will expect from web pages.

My new book is here! Apress has just published a new collection of 36 essays from Joel on Software, aptly named More Joel on Software. Get yours today! Available from Amazon.com or wherever fine cheese is sold.

About the Author: I’m your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz—the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot—the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure.

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