umm this... You are already thinking way up ahead arent you? I am not sure how PHP's development will go, they are indeed adding some really nice features though. The biggest problem with PHP is that it is still at its heart a procedural language with object supports. In fact I am more of a fan of class-based programming languages though, I have considered Java servlet and Ruby at times. NodeJS is the server-side javascript language, isnt it? I was wondering how javascript 2.0 comes along, it was said to have additions like classes and interfaces.
Ah thats so generous of you, must have seen the thread she made? About AJAX, well, I found a new php ajax framework that can be used as third party script similar to ckeditor we already have. It's called CJAX, used by Codeignitor and CakePHP. Unlike xAjax which is pretty much dead, CJAX is actually under active development.