ASP.NET Ajax Released

darrenkopp writes "Microsoft released their anticipated AJAX framework that integrates with their ASP.NET product .It is a fully supported product (24x7 phone support), but is completely free! They are releasing the source for it as well."

Re:Too many layers!

[CastrTroy]

It also gives the developers less of an idea what's really going on. And it gives them less control. If the only way the developers know how to use AJAX is with the MS toolkit, then they're going to have a hard time when it doesn't support something they want to do. Same thing with the way the forms designer works. Sure it makes it really easy that you can drag and drop controls and make a web application really fast, but when you want to do something that it doesn't support, then you're screwed, and if you ever want to switch platforms, then good luck. Tying your development too much to one solution tends to really limit the things you can do.

Been Playing With It

[WED Fan]

I've been playing with this since this last summer. It's come a long way. A few Anti-AJAX friends of mine, who honestly, have been using AJAX concepts for years, but didn't know someone had put a pretty ribbon on it and called it AJAX, really like the ASP.NET AJAX. I think what caught them was the RAD ability now.

I like it because I have customers who wanted a more Windows Forms based design for their web-based applications.

The great thing here is, it is capable of turning SharePoint into a really slick platform. I only wish it worked on SharePoint 2.0 the way it works on 3.0, since I still have customers using the older platform.

Re:Too many layers!

[LordEd]

AJAX applications and ASP.NET are highly prone to failure.

Can't say much about ajax, but care to support your second statement? Who coded them? Were they coded by a real developer, or by somebody who doesn't know how to use the language?

Any language is prone to failure if the programmer doesn't know how to code properly.

You can't have it both ways...

[WED Fan]

TinFoilJones said:

Doesn't matter. I'm not eating it, and neither are the users of any site I have a hand in developing.

Huh? Did he just...? Are the Obvious Police available?

Come on, guys - how many times you have to be bitten by these monopolists to realize that they can't be trusted? Or put another way, we (developers) write the rules now, and we don't have to let them in! Or as James T. Kirk said: "Let them die!"

Are you seriously calling them "monopolists"? How can they be a monopolist in the online, web development arena when folks out there claim that most of the web is dominated by SOTMS (Someone Other Than Microsoft)? You can't have it both ways. They cannot be monopolists if there is a sizeable or even more dominant alernative out there. Now, their philosphy may smack of monopoly, but in reality, they are just another competitor.

OS - Microsoft is a monopoly and Linux, Apple, Sun have failed, or MS is a competitor and Linux, Apple, Sun are doing fine.

Web - Microsoft .NET and IIS are a monopoly and Linux, Apache, Java, Perl, PHP...are dead, or MS is a competitor and others are dominating.

You can't have it both ways. Just admit, you've joined the "in", the "cool", the "hip" crowd of the Anti-Microsoft cult, you've stopped critical thought on the matter, and if it has MS attached, you will instantly hate it. It's o.k. to admit. Really.