I'm happy to see that Ajax.NET Professional is used about 13.3% when using .NET related web applications. Starting with my first post Using a HttpHandler and Attributes to call C# methods in JavaScript in February 2005 the AJAX hype started around the world. Two months later I renamed the project to Ajax.NET and added nearly all features that are the most used until today. In May 2005 Windows Mobile support has been added and Ajax.NET was the only .NET framework that was able to run AJAX requests on mobile devices. In the end of 2005 I was invited to the PDC 05 in Los Angeles where I could meet Brian Goldfarb and Jonathan Hawkins to see how Microsoft is working on AJAX in ASP.NET (Atlas). I meet some other .NET developers and had great ideas on how AJAX will change web applications. In October I published a new product called Ajax.NET Professional which was doing the same but contains several other security features. Because of a change in the JavaScript source I changed the name from Ajax.NET.

In the first week of 2006 I received a congratulation mail from Microsoft telling me that I received the MVP award for ASP/ASP.NET, wow. During 2006 many AJAX frameworks or AJAX related controls came up and ASP.NET AJAX has been released and is now part of Visual Studio .NET 2008 and the .NET framework 3.5.

Because Ajax.NET Professional fits all my needs (and the needs of many other companies) I didn't add more features like UpdatePanel or controls. Nearly 90% of my source code I'm writing is JavaScript the reason why I was not interested in WebControls. 2007 I got again the MVP award for my work on AJAX and other web related stuff.

Today I have my eyes on new technologies that will change client application development (web applications). To see any feedback of my MVP award for 2008 I'd like to concentrate more on those topics. I'm still using AJAX in nearly all my web applications, but the future will bring more important features.

Future of Ajax.NET Professional

Well, I think you know what will come now. Yes, I will stop working on my baby AjaxPro. I feel sorry about that and will say Thank you! to all of you that have made Ajax.NET Professional a great framework. Without your help the private project never get such a big success until today!!

As ASP.NET AJAX includes PageMethods (which are very similar to the AjaxMethod attribut in Ajax.NET) I recommend to switch to ASP.NET AJAX for newer projects. ASP.NET AJAX is included in the next Visual Studio .NET 2008 and .NET framework 3.5. New technologies like Silverlight and the MVC framework will support or can be combined with ASP.NET AJAX.

The Google group for Ajax.NET and the Codeplex project will be still open. If you have any question how to move from AjaxPro to ASP.NET AJAX you should start in the Microsoft forum.

15 Comments

• Yann Carpentier said Friday, January 4, 2008 11:56:57 AM

  AjaxPro AjaxMethod attribute can be used for methods in an UserControl or in a custom server controls. ASP.NET Ajax can't. That's why I will not switch to ASP.NET Ajax

• Marc said Friday, January 4, 2008 1:49:31 PM

  Michael, THANK YOU for your hard work on that great library. For me AJAXpro is still the most used in our environment. I love it because it is free and open for everything. I use it with jQuery.

• Andrija said Friday, January 4, 2008 4:37:40 PM

  Great library, first ajax library I used, and still using in some projects, small projects with jquery. I love the idea from Will Gillen to make it open source, I think it would be right move for project to continue. Thank you for your great library.

• B said Friday, January 4, 2008 5:32:57 PM

  I've been dreading this day...I was afraid of becoming too dependent on it incase it was going to be abandoned.....sucks. But...thanks for the work. I don't know if you are an expert in with the PageMethods..but it would be great if you could create a couple posts regarding them. Maybe "Migrating From AjaxPro to PageMethods", or if you could draw some associations between the two......maybe a couple examples in both AjaxPro and how to accomplish the same thing with PageMethods.... Anyways...thanks again for all your work.

• Stian Solberg said Friday, January 4, 2008 6:39:40 PM

  If you are looking for a brilliant architecture Ajax framework for .NET and want it to be open source, I would recommend checking out Gaia Ajax Widgets. We have a dual license, meaning if you build GPL software yourself you can use our GPL version, and if you are building a commercial, closed software project you can buy our commercial version. I don't think you will be disappointed... :-)

• Thomas Hansen said Friday, January 4, 2008 10:43:08 PM

  Here's a little ping back about these sad news :( ajaxwidgets.com/.../ajax_net_professional_is_dead.bb .t

• Simone said Saturday, January 5, 2008 9:45:08 AM

  That's a really sad news... AJAX.NET was the first ASP.NET ajax framework I started to use in 2005. Anyway I second your decision: Ajax.NET is only a js wrapper of page methods with no UI controls, and, as you say, ASP.NET Ajax includes the same feature, now also with the ability to call WCF services. Thank you for the good work: hopefully someone will take the lead of the opensource version of it on CodePlex. Simo

• interactive said Saturday, January 5, 2008 11:50:42 AM

  I will provide an example how to move from Ajax.NET Professional to ASP.NET AJAX in the next days. I'm searching for some developers that want to control the source at the CodePlex project, not sure who would be the best, yet. Michael

• Ohad Aston said Monday, January 7, 2008 6:31:55 PM

  This is some bad news for ASP.NET developers. AjaxPro is smart and light framework. I think that there are quite a few developers that using and will use this framework. It is better that a lot of other frameworks for ASP.NET (not free\open source).

• Avi Pinto said Monday, January 7, 2008 9:05:37 PM

  Very sad day indeed… We are using AjaxPro in our team for the last year and a half. We wanted to move to Ajax.net because of the reasons you mentioned, but the little things, that are great at AjaxPro are still missing there.

• Michael Mahemoff said Wednesday, January 9, 2008 11:25:48 PM

  Michael, congratulations on your contribution over the past few years on what has been a very important Ajax framework in the .NET space.

• xsirxx said Tuesday, January 15, 2008 8:56:13 PM

  I was wondering if anyone knew the equivalent of a JSON parser on the .NET(server) side using Microsoft libraries? If not should we continue to use Ajax.NET or is there a better alternative? Thanks again!

• hassan said Friday, January 18, 2008 2:44:55 PM

  Thanks!, I switched from ASP.NET Ajax to AjaxPro.NET near 2 months ago!

• Eduardo Goicovich said Thursday, January 31, 2008 2:18:45 PM

  Michael...thanks too much for your time and give us a piece of wonderful code ... I regret that the project be cold Is there somebody that carry out to the next level??? For the most...is the fastest and reliable ajax framework for the .net community regards

• Tom said Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:53:26 PM

  AJAX.NET is what Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX Extensions SHOULD HAVE BEEN like. Why is it that three people working on this project produced a better, more efficient, more usable codebase than the dozen-or-so developers MS threw at the same task? Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX Extensions are obviously a stop-gap until Silverlight is solid and integrated into our toolset. Microsoft really missed the boat when it comes to integrating AJAX into ASP.NET.