14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has released the final form of the product formerly code-named Atlas. The Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 framework is available for download as of January 23, 2007, enabling developers to create personalized web experiences. "ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 delivers a rich client-side AJAX library that provides cross platform, cross browser support for a core JavaScript type-system, JSON-based network serialization stack, JavaScript component/control model, as well as common client JavaScript helper classes," revealed Microsoft's Scott Guthrie. "ASP.NET AJAX also delivers a rich server-side library that integrates AJAX functionality within ASP.NET, and enables developers to easily AJAX-enable existing ASP.NET 2.0 sites with minimal effort."
Scott Guthrie, the General Manager within the Microsoft Developer Division published a list with the enhancements and bug fixes that have been introduced in the RTM build compared with the release candidate. According to Guthrie, shared hosting scenarios have been improved as far as performance and scalability are concerned. ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 framework additionally features support for substitution caching, enabling fragment caching scenarios, and is a more robust product.
Guthrie also mentioned that ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 features "globalization fixes to ScriptManager and ScriptResource handler to support date & number parsing and UI culture fallback. Updated ScriptResource handler to support automatic enabling/disabling JavaScript compression based on browser type."
ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 is available as a free download and has been designed to seamlessly integrate with ASP.NET 2.0 and with Visual Studio 2005. In fact, ASP.NET AJAX delivers an array of technologies that introduce Asynchronous JavaScript and XML support for ASP.NET. Client-side script framework and server controls are an integer part of ASP.NET AJAX.
ASP.NET AJAX 1.0.61025 was tested by Softpedia as being 100% Clean and is available for download here.