Introducing the ASP.NET Ajax Library Beta

During PDC 09 I grabbed some time with Stephen Walther to talk about some of the exciting new developments with the ASP.NET Ajax Library.  There were a number of new things to talk about including:

• The ASP.NET Ajax Library is now in Beta
• Merging the Ajax Control Toolkit and the ASP.NET Ajax Library
• There is now a pure client-side version of the Ajax Control Toolkit as well as the server-side version
• Microsoft donating the ASP.NET Ajax Library into the CodePlex Foundation
• There is now full product support of ASP.NET Ajax Library from Microsoft (including Ajax Control Toolkit

We then walked through some demos of the ASP.NET Ajax Library that brings the following exciting capabilities to developers:

Power

• Build data-centric web apps using advanced client-side data access libraries and controls

• Keep your markup clean and standards-compliant with imperative coding
• Make it easier to code using JavaScript intellisense in Visual Studio
• Keep loading and execution of your scripts simple with the Script Loader with advanced management and execution features

Performance

• Use the ASP.NET Ajax Library CDN for lightning fast downloads of ASP.NET Ajax Library and jQuery
• Reduce the number of requests to the server using script combining in the Script Loader
• Reduce the size of your scripts using the ASP.NET Ajax Minifier Tool

Interoperability

• Works across all browsers and any platform; ASP.NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails etc
• Explore the code and make modifications, it’s open source
• Use powerful jQuery selection syntax and Ajax Control Toolkit controls together
• Create your own controls by extending ours like the DataView

Check out my full blog post about the news here: http://www.jamessenior.com/post/News-on-the-ASPNET-Ajax-Library.aspx

Check out the docs and samples on the wiki here: http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary  
Download the code from http://ajax.codeplex.com