Over the past year we have been developing our own set of AJAX controls.  Many of these controls can be seen in Active Purchase and Active CRM.  We started adding AJAX functionality to Active Forums with the 3.7 release.  The post preview and search functionality were built using our own ajax controls.  The next version of Active Forums will offer AJAX Forum Navigation.  AJAX Forum Navigation is going to allow for your users to view topics and move between pages without reloading the entire page. 

We also haven't forgot about search engine optimization.  After all, we were the first DNN forum module to provide SEO capabilities.  As an administrator you will have the option to completely disable the AJAX navigation.  Users will also have the option to disable AJAX in their profile.  We have also gone one step further.  Ajax Navigation will only be available to known supported browsers.  This means that when a search engine spider visits your site it will still be able to access your forums, assuming your security settings permit access.  This will also ensure that mobile users will be able properly access your forums as well.

Not only is AJAX Forum Navigation going to improve the usability of your forums, it's also going to reduce your server resources.  Since the entire page doesn't have to be reloaded with every click you will use less bandwidth.  This also means that all modules on the given page will not have to be reloaded, which will reduce the number of database hits. 

AJAX Forum Navigation is something we have been working on for over a year.  Developing products like Active Purchase and Active CRM allowed us to fully test our suite of AJAX controls before including them in a product with 1000's of customers, such as Active Forums.

We hope you are looking forward to this capability as much as us.

Thanks,
Will