In favour of Ajax HTML
I’m often asked why I prefer to use Ajax HTML rather than XML or JSON etc. There are multiple reasons I cite, one is it’s easier to maintain but the more important one is that it’s faster and less work (both on the frontend and the backend).
Here’s an interesting benchmarking article that nicely backs me up!
http://www.jamesward.org/wordpress/2007/04/30/ajax-and-flex-data-loading-benchmarks/
and
http://ajaxian.com/archives/ria-data-loading-benchmarks
While the bandwidth is slightly higher, in our target environments it’s not so much of an issue as we are, by in large, running over a network rather than the internet. And as bandwidth for Rich Internet Applications becomes less of an issue, the exec time is important.
To anticipate a comment, JSON is important for updating multiple areas but for a block update I’m firmly in favour of using the innerHTML method.

By vaseCaxadderia on 17 Feb 2008
By vaseCaxadderia on 24 Feb 2008