Joe On ASP.NET

Is Microsoft Committed to AJAX ?

ajax_logo

I got this recently in an email from a developer friend.

“Is Microsoft committed to Ajax? If so, why is development so slow? (Yeah I know, Silverlight, that means nothing until it is at least version 2 and wide spread.)

I am seriously disappointed, and I think others are too. After the 1.0 excitement, there is nothing to get excited about. (What's up with ASP.NET Futures anyway, how about right now?)”

I guess that it's hard to keep up with all the new stuff in our profession, so I thought I would hi-light some of the new AJAX related stuff that we've been building, especially in ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 (currently in Beta) as an illustration our investments in AJAX enabling technologies.

  • Core Integration of ASP.NET AJAX - ASP.NET AJAX is no longer an add-on to ASP.NET. It is now a first class concept like XML Web Services or Data Access. This means full support, full feature lifecycle, etc.
  • Full and Dynamic JavaScript Intellisense support in Visual Studio 2008. This includes the JavaScript language and all the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions as well as dynamic support for the code that you write.
  • First Class JavaScript Debugging Support in Visual Studio 2008, complete with Break Points, Watch, Immediates, Call Stack, everything you would expect from a first class debugger PLUS, both design time and run time code images so you can drill down into your applications exact JavaScript state and collection at runtime no matter how much dynamic JavaScript is involved in your application.
  • JSON, RSS, and POX support for WCF so that all your WCF services can me AJAX Callable.
  • The AJAX Controls Toolkit has grown to 34 controls.
  • 64 ASP.NET AJAX  How Do I Videos offering tutorial and prescriptive guidance on how to use the features of ASP.NET AJAX
  • Forthcoming soon....new ASP.NET AJAX controls like the history control, selector support, and other improvements on both the client and server side.

To me that seems like allot of work in a fairly short time (since ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 was released.)

What's with the "Futures" ???

The current "Futures" include ....

  • History support for the Safari browser, inclusion of “titles”, encoding and encrypting of server-side history state and the ability to handle history in the client without a server requirement.
  • CSS Selectors APIs have been modified to be applicable to W3C recommendations.
  • A script resource extraction tool that allows you to create script files on disk that originate from embedded resources in assemblies.

The reason the Futures are not "Right Now" is simple.

Developers have asked to be more involved in defining the end products we create. "Futures" releases gives folks the chance to get their hands on VERY early bits of the new stuff that we're working on, and that means you can provide feedback early enough in the process to effect the final outcome.

Most folks tell me that they LOVE the fact that we're being so transparent in much of our development process.

So in short - YES :) We're very serious about AJAX !

Posted: Nov 09 2007, 09:50 AM by JoeStagner | with 6 comment(s)
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Comments

Drew Marsh said:

Good to hear, but seriously the Futures are stagnant. There's been very little in the way of updates except to add support for Silverlight in the past couple of releases.

All the power is in the futures: xml-script, bindings, controls, templates. So, what's the deal? Will xml-script go the JSON route instead? Will the problems with templating be fixed (i.e. having to nest templates and forcing nodes to be cloned/wiped out unecessarily)? Etc, etc, etc.

Thanks,

Drew

# November 9, 2007 11:54 AM

Vikram said:

Thanks for post.These kind of posts help in keeping the trust in a product

# November 10, 2007 1:16 PM

kazimanzurrashid said:

Hi Joe,

It is a bit confusing how the Ajax part in Future is evolving. Let us say Both AjaxControlToolKit and Core Ajax Library has the Drag and Drop Manager as well as the Animation Behaviors of its own.  In addition, it seems the Animation in ACT is much more stable comparing to Core (Clear type font is completely ignored in Core but Act addresses it). Moreover, another annoying thing with the Core is that the JS file so much intermixed that if I just want to use the Drag and Drop Manager I have to include the Large PreviewScript.js (where only the Timer class is used) which I think is such a waste of Bandwidth. So I am when can I expect to get well structure files of the Core and is there any chance that the above common part of the ACT will be replaced by the Core?

# November 10, 2007 3:22 PM

Mike said:

Seriously, your answer to our worries is video's and WCF support?

Rant (feel free to ignore, but I think I have some valid points):

First of all: It's about time Visual Studio understood JavaScript, and it's really sad that Microsoft had to invent their own documentation standard for it, totally ignoring scriptdoc (hello, can we standardize on standards please?). Normally Scott Guthrie answers all questions on his blog, but when asked about scriptdoc, it was ignored. Even sadder is having to actually write code (sort of a comment) to include a script file to get intellisense! What, I'm now writing code for my IDE?

And how does all that help me get drag and drop, or a decent treeview. or client side gridview sorting? The toolkit has bugfixes and a new testing framework. Meanwhile there's not even a way to pause animations with the toolkit. You see, from my point of view, it's not moving, at all.

The fact that you now call Futures _very early_ stuff makes me worry even more. I still can't believe Microsoft bumps the version number for ASP.NET Ajax from 1.0 to 3.5 with not that much to show for it.

Sure, the process is more open now, but there's still a disconnect between what you guys think is great (Silverlight, WCF, javascript intellisense) and what I think is great (actual releases). If I'm the only that feels this way, please ignore, but somehow, I think I'm not.

# November 13, 2007 3:58 PM

Mike said:

Just wanted to post here one more time:

It's been two months and there's a new Ajax Control Toolkit release: ONE BUG FIX! That's it folks, nothing to see here, move along now, on to something better.

# November 20, 2007 3:22 AM

Stephane said:

Count me in on the rant thread. xml-script / client-side databinding was the stuff I was excited about when Atlas was in beta. 18 months later - virtually nothing's happened in that area. No support for xml-script in VS 2008. When I posted about this in the Orcas beta thread, the answer I got was "maybe in 2010". Are you kidding?

If xml-script and client-side controls are dead, MS would do developers a favor by just aknowledging it so we can all switch to active, well supported javascript frameworks.

# December 20, 2007 4:09 PM
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