Let's see. Flex is based on XML and ActionScript 3, which is based on ECMAScript, the international standardized programming language for scripting. ECMA-262 to be exact.

Not one comment about Silverlight - XAML, JavaScript and C# are pretty much not standardized; but it's a necessary evil in some client projects.

That's more than one standard. Now, in my comment, I can see how it could be skewed to support your idea that Flex/Silverlight developers don't care about standards; however you're very wrong. XML, E4X, ECMA, MVC, all make appearances in my day.

And without specifying what "standards" you're talking about; I'd suggest that you do more research into what you're talking about.

Now, in regards to AJAX, there's nothing new about xmlhttprequest. It's not really changed since Microsoft dreamt it up years ago. However, as I were talking, I was talking about the presentation layer and how you can use AJAX to represent data and pull queries and display that information without having to redraw the entire screen. Same as I would do in Flex/Flash.

There's nothing new about asynchronous data; but I suggest that you understand that I was talking about RIA's and more importantly, the presentation layer.

Nice try though.