is ajax necessary for a website to be great?
My friend and I are building a website together.  He is insistent that page refreshes are a thing of the past and that we should build the whole website in AJAX.  His only reason why page refreshes are 'annoying' is that they are too slow.  However, the page is running fine without AJAX currently and when I click from page to page, it seems instantaneous to me. It doesn't seem that it would benefit from additional speed, but he just says I'm being stubborn.  I do want to use AJAX for certain features and pages within the site.  I feel like I understand the pros and cons.  He references that gmail is made in AJAX, but the url changes as I go into different mailboxes, so I don't think it is 100% AJAX.  I reference wikipedia, which is actually much more similar to our site, as an example of a highly succesful website which doesn't seem to NEED AJAX.  But he says that's just one example, and that I am fixated on on wikipedia.  When I tell him that AJAX is great, but that most of the internet will still require page refreshes and page links, he thinks I'm crazy.  When I tell him that using AJAX when not needed will make the back-button useless, he tells me that I'm obsessed with the back button.  I think AJAX is something that can be added later to make functionality smoother on certain features, but that it is OK to build the core of the website without it for now.  Who is right?  Is he obsessed?  Or am I stubborn?
is ajax necessary for a website to be great?
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My friend and I are building a website together.  He is insistent that page refreshes are a thing of the past and that we should build the whole website in AJAX.  His only reason why page refreshes are 'annoying' is that they are too slow.  However, the page is running fine without AJAX currently and when I click from page to page, it seems instantaneous to me. It doesn't seem that it would benefit from additional speed, but he just says I'm being stubborn.  I do want to use AJAX for certain features and pages within the site.  I feel like I understand the pros and cons.  He references that gmail is made in AJAX, but the url changes as I go into different mailboxes, so I don't think it is 100% AJAX.  I reference wikipedia, which is actually much more similar to our site, as an example of a highly succesful website which doesn't seem to NEED AJAX.  But he says that's just one example, and that I am fixated on on wikipedia.  When I tell him that AJAX is great, but that most of the internet will still require page refreshes and page links, he thinks I'm crazy.  When I tell him that using AJAX when not needed will make the back-button useless, he tells me that I'm obsessed with the back button.  I think AJAX is something that can be added later to make functionality smoother on certain features, but that it is OK to build the core of the website without it for now.  Who is right?  Is he obsessed?  Or am I stubborn?