OT: ajax image galleries

[Chris Wright]

2008/6/3 "Marco Trevisan (Treviño)" <mail at 3v1n0.net>:
> There are some pics and videos by Einstein from freeyourphone.de:
>  - http://tinyurl.com/66ktzl

(URL maps to http://freeyourphone.de/portal_v1/gallery/menu.php?gallery=members&album_id=8
)

Those AJAX image widgets seem to be designed adversarially. They
prevent tabbed browsing of images, make it difficult to link to an
image, impose additional delays on the viewer, and introduce a new UI
for navigating the galleries that doesn't fit in with any existing
browser. Viewing a large image and then a small one requires
additional scrolling, unlike any non-ajax solutions I've seen. The one
that that link goes to allows you to click on the right half of the
image to go to the next image or the left half of the image to go to
the previous, with no visual clues that that is what is happening.

Do they have any recognizable merit whatsoever? Why do people use them?