&quot;Nobody used it&quot; because until the early &#x27;00s bandwidth was so precious, and latency so huge, that making multiple HTTP calls was <i>insane</i> in most target markets (US&#x2F;EU). So you would try to cram everything you could in one big request and push it out. JS was also very immature (both as a language and browser runtime, with differing DOM support etc), and computers could hang if your code was too expensive.<p>When DSL, cable and fiber started becoming commonplace, computers got faster and browsers started shipping compatible and optimized runtimes, <i>then</i> advanced techniques became really accessible. Eventually jQuery came out, making all browsers work the same, and the rest is history.