Coding Day

It has been more than a year since Atlas is out. I remember playing with the first hands-on-labs for doing a search query. I also really liked the Ajax Control Toolkit since the first day, still using two controls in a project. Now that baby is out of CTP, BETA and ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 is released. A lot has changed since it’s first release. The objects in javascript library, the method names, object names and the product name have changed. As a result, we have 2 separate products. ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions 1.0 (Client and Server), ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit . There is one more product which is ASP.NET AJAX Futures January CTP. This is the additional javascript library to provide additional functionality.

Interestingly, it has been shipped with source code.  There is no escape for the client source code release but they also include the server side controls which is good. Although we don’t have the server side controls code, Scott Guthrie announced the server side controls source code will  be released shortly. Client side is released with Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL) and server side with Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL).  The client side is more flexible in terms of license to extend the library.  

Thanks to the team…

Today Scott Guthrie has annonced the Atlas Roadmap. The good news is Microsoft will give full support to Atlas  since they are planning to ship by the end of the year. The bad news is the cool atlas name goes.

• Atlas (Client Side) -> Microsoft Ajax Library
• Atlas (Server Side) -> ASP.NET 2.0 Ajax Extensions
• Atlas Control Toolkit -> ASP.NET Control Toolkit

Anyway more meaningful names as well. I am also surprised that they have split the client side and server side products.