Don't be too quick to dump your plugin or applet based portions of your application. While ajax and dhtml can do drag and drop and other advanced user interfaces there still limitations especially when it comes to browser support. Plugins and applets have been around for a while and have been able to make ajax like requests for years. Applets provide a great set of ui components and apis that provide developers literally anything.
What is asynchronous request in ajax?
Methods of consuming web services in AJAX?
How do I handle concurrent ajax requests?
Difference between server-side ajax framework and client-side ajax framework?
What is AJAX Framework?
What browsers support ajax?
Is the ajaxcontroltoolkit.dll file installed in the global assembly cache? : asp.net ajax
What are ajax controls?
What is the disadvantage of ajax?
When do I use a synchronous versus asynchronous request?
What are the protocols used by Ajax?
What are the difference between AJAX and Javascript?