January 2007 is fast going down as the month of key releases.
Today is no different as we see the RTM (final) version of Microsoft ASP.Net Ajax 1.0. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I have been using the CTP’s and Beta’s since last April and I have seen many improvements. The 1.0 final release promises to be a fundamental release that will see many ASP.Net applications update to include more AJAX capabilities as development departments realize just how easy it is with ASP.Net Ajax.
I’m still not convinced that the bugs are all out, but I do think that you should invest some of your time downloading and using this if only for the ease of hooking up Web services and server-side code to your client-side scripts etc…
ASp.Net Ajax 1.0 allows you to use your existing investment in Visual Studio 2005 to build richer more client friendly ASP.Net applications with less effort. And if that wasn’t enough then make note: it’s from Microsoft and it’s free…
There is also a control toolkit containing over 30 controls for you to make use of including Accordion, AutoComplete, Masked Edit, Tabs. This part is a community shared-source project and there is plenty of documentation, samples and an SDK so you can create your own controls, why not have a go and submit them for inclusion in the toolkit’s future releases.
Then if you are still feeling adventurous you could download the ASP.Net Ajax Futures January CTP which extends the Core ASp.Net Ajax 1.0 platform with extra stuff not yet in the released version. If you used the CTP versions of ASP.Net Ajax then you will possibly need this as some stuff didn’t make it into the release version for one reason or another and you may find your projects break without it.