| Ajax is fast becoming the buzzword in web development for 2006. It’s also becoming a
de facto standard for developing user-centric web applications. It’s an evolutionary step in
the user experience and is being used in more and more web applications from Google Local
maps to Live.com to Amazon and beyond.
But how do you write Ajax applications? You’ve got to be a JavaScript expert and use tools
that are not as sophisticated as those your C# or Java friends use. As such, it can be difficult
and time-consuming to develop, debug, and maintain Ajax applications despite their innate
user friendliness.
Microsoft is contributing to the solution for this problem with its Atlas framework. This
builds on top of the best-of-breed ASP.NET technology and Visual Studio 2005 integrated
development environment (IDE) to bring major productivity leaps to Ajax development.
With Atlas you can easily convert your existing ASP.NET applications to Ajax ones, and
you can add sophisticated user interface elements such as drag and drop, networking, and
browser compatibility layers with simple declarative programming (or, if you prefer to use
JavaScript, you can do that too).
This book is a primer on this technology. It will take you through the evolution of web
applications to where they are today, introduce you to Ajax, put it in context, and then take
you into how to build Ajax applications quickly and simply, taking advantage of the IDE productivity
and full debugging offered by Visual Studio 2005.
It’s going to be a fun ride, and by the end of it, you’ll be an expert in Web 2.0 and hungry
to start developing for it. And who knows? You may even start shaping Web 3.0! |
