I don’t think we’ve even begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities that remote scripting opens up.

Second that!

Once the iframe document has finished loading, it calls a function to copy its own innerHTML in to a div contained in the parent window that loaded it.

I know that for my application I do something similair. What I generally do, is when the iframe loads, call a function on the main javascript window. This window can then access the data from the iframe that has now loaded.

Part of the reason for doing this is I have a sort of switch back. I use the iframe for automatic checking, e.g. lets say checking for new emails to arrive so it reloads itself. When some remote server call is made, i reuse the iframe to call that page, and then reset it to the auto reload of the email check page, so far it works pretty well; I have functionalised it and linked into my html/content functions.

I don’t have demo online but will currently; I have begun to realise how useful this is going to be for our app, unfortunatly that was a bit late in development stage so it is going to have to be next version to start fully using it, but the usefulness is so there.

One major thing I have been considering is pre-form submit validation. You can now remove all that js validation; validate using the PHP you will do the validation with anyway and save the rewrite of validation code in two languages.

i) Someone enters form data. Press the Submit button
ii) Make a remote script call to server
iii) If not validated, some javascript wizadry to explain this to user. Page is already there etc.
iv) If validated, perhaps do whatever we where going to do, then send back a call to the browser to redirect to the page you where going to anyway.

Advantages:

i) no js validation functions
ii) no need to even consider writing the PHP to handle creating forms to handle a failed form submit, e.g. handling difference between editing a form and redoing a form etc.
iii) Much quicker, no browser reload for a failed form submit.

Cearly, this would completly break the app if you disable javascript, but in apps where you have some control over the environment, that should not be a problem.

For full-strength validation, the technique would need to be taken further, but there’s no reason you can’t specify your validation in one xml document residing on your server, and have both your javascript and server side language reference that file to validate forms.

The question I have is, does this scripted switching of content sit well with screen readers? Do they somehow get notified of the change?

This is great. I’m more partial to the XML HTTP Request method becasue it seems a whole lot cleaner, but either way it’s so much better without a full page refresh.