The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was released this week and one of the first things that I hope you notice is that it no longer contains the latest version of ASP.NET AJAX. What happened? Where did AJAX go?

Just like Sting and The Police, just like Phil Collins and Genesis, just like Greg Page and the Wiggles, AJAX has gone out of band! We are starting a solo career.

A Name Change

First things first. In previous releases, our Ajax framework was named ASP.NET AJAX. We now have changed the name of the framework to the Microsoft Ajax Library. There are two reasons behind this name change.

First, the members of the Ajax team got tired of explaining to everyone that our Ajax framework is not tied to the server-side ASP.NET framework. You can use the Microsoft Ajax Library with ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, PHP, Ruby on RAILS, and even pure HTML applications. Our framework can be used as a client-only framework and having the word ASP.NET in our name was confusing people.

Second, it was time to start spelling the word Ajax like everyone else. Notice that the name is the Microsoft Ajax Library and not the Microsoft AJAX library. Originally, Microsoft used upper case AJAX because AJAX originally was an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. And, according to Strunk and Wagnell, acronyms should be all uppercase. However, Ajax is one of those words that have migrated from acronym status to “just a word” status.

So whenever you hear one of your co-workers talk about ASP.NET AJAX, gently correct your co-worker and say “It is now called the Microsoft Ajax Library.”

Why OOB?

But why move out-of-band (OOB)? The short answer is that we have had approximately 6 preview releases of the Microsoft Ajax Library over the last year. That’s a lot.

We pride ourselves on being agile. Client-side technology evolves quickly. We want to be able to get a preview version of the Microsoft Ajax Library out to our customers, get feedback, and make changes to the library quickly. Shipping the Microsoft Ajax Library out-of-band keeps us agile and enables us to continue to ship new versions of the library even after ASP.NET 4 ships.

Showing Love for JavaScript Developers

One area in which we have received a lot of feedback is around making the Microsoft Ajax Library easier to use for developers who are comfortable with JavaScript. We also wanted to make it easy for jQuery developers to take advantage of the innovative features of the Microsoft Ajax Library.

To achieve these goals, we’ve added the following features to the Microsoft Ajax Library (these features are included in the latest preview release that you can download right now):

  • A simplified imperative syntax – We wanted to make it brain-dead simple to create client-side Ajax controls when writing JavaScript.
  • A client script loader – We wanted the Microsoft Ajax Library to load all of the scripts required by a component or control automatically.
  • jQuery integration – We love the jQuery selector syntax. We wanted to make it easy for jQuery developers to use the Microsoft Ajax Library without changing their programming style.

If you are interested in learning about these new features of the Microsoft Ajax Library, I recommend that you read the following blog post by Scott Guthrie:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/10/15/announcing-microsoft-ajax-library-preview-6-and-the-microsoft-ajax-minifier.aspx

Downloading the Latest Version of the Microsoft Ajax Library

Currently, the best place to download the latest version of the Microsoft Ajax Library is directly from the ASP.NET CodePlex project:

http://aspnet.codeplex.com/

As I write this, the current version is Preview 6. The next version is coming out at the PDC.

Summary

I’m really excited about the future of the Microsoft Ajax Library. Moving outside of the ASP.NET framework provides us the flexibility to remain agile and continue to innovate aggressively. The latest preview release of the Microsoft Ajax Library includes several major new features including a client script loader, jQuery integration, and a simplified client control creation syntax.

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posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:21 AM | Filed Under [ AJAX ASP.NET JavaScript ]

Comments

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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by De
on 10/21/2009 11:26 AM

Steven, can we expect a book from you on MS Ajax Library?
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Praveen Prasad
on 10/21/2009 11:45 AM

iam still waiting for js file script folding support.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Art Colman
on 10/21/2009 12:24 PM

In reviewing the content of the MS Ajax Lib Preview 6 I am struggling with determining how to implement the script loading behavior for an Ajax Control Toolkit item other than the examples provided in the Preview (for example, AutoComplete).

My first step was to try to reverse engineer what was done for the watermark implementation. It appears that a the Ajax Control Toolkit script has been renamed from TextBoxWartermark to ACTWatermark and that the ACTRegisterExtended has been adjusted to reference this renamed script. Is it possible to provide some sort of recipe that could be followed?

I don't think I'm stupid... just a bit illiterate.

Thanks for the extremely thorough work.

Best regards, ArtC
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Craig
on 10/21/2009 1:23 PM

That's interesting. Microsoft Ajax Library *uses* AJAX, but is not itself limited to AJAX, it does quite a bit more. Strictly speaking, AJAX is simply using Javascript to make an asynchronous call to the server, returning XML. Last I checked, the Microsoft Ajax Library does a lot to add on to that capability.

Nice distinction, let's hope it filters through the industry.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Koistya `Navin
on 10/21/2009 2:40 PM

Great work. Thanks guys! Yeah, "Microsoft Ajax Library" sounds much better.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Bertrand Le Roy
on 10/21/2009 5:57 PM

@Craig: if one sees "Ajax" as a rebranding of JavaScript, it all makes sense...
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Imran
on 10/21/2009 8:54 PM

This means that Microsoft Ajax Library installed separately.
But if some BuiltIn Server Controls used Scripts that contains ASP.NET AJAX classes then where they find the classes.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Stephen.Walther
on 10/21/2009 9:40 PM

@Imran -- ASP.NET 4 includes Microsoft Ajax version 4. This version of Microsoft Ajax does not contain any of the new features like client templates, client data-binding, and client data access.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Thanigainathan
on 10/21/2009 11:56 PM

Hi Sir,

The new naming is welcome .We are happy that the framework is not tied with any specific server apps. Can you please explain why should I go for this when we have jquery already ?

Whats going to be relally advantageous ?

Thanks,
Thani
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by healthcare
on 10/22/2009 1:40 AM

Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2 nice
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by LongKnights
on 10/22/2009 5:58 AM

Thanks.

Since MS ASP.NET doesn't even consider iteself a client-server technology (reference the fact that you have to postback to enable or make a control visible) it is nice to see more support for client-side development.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Jay
on 10/22/2009 6:43 AM

@Praveen Prasad - I agree - Notepad++ supports code folding, why can't Visual Studio?
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Stephen.Walther
on 10/22/2009 7:03 AM

@Thanigainathan -- Great question! Let me start by saying that we don't want you to choose between ms ajax and jQuery -- we want you to use both.

We designed ms ajax to appeal to jQuery developers. For example, you can create an ms ajax Watermak control using jQuery like this: $("#myTextBox").watermark("Enter some text"); As soon as you load jQuery into a page -- by adding a SCRIPT reference or by using the client script loader -- you can start using any ms ajax control from jQuery automatically.

jQuery has a great selector syntax. MS Ajax, on the other hand, is really good at client templates, client data-binding, client data access, and our client script loader.

So the short answer: please use both jQuery and ms ajax.

-- Stephen
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Antonio
on 10/22/2009 8:18 PM

Stephen, are there plans to set up documentation of the library (msdn, wiki-style or something similar)? Would be nice to have this as a complement of being able to read the code.

Also, is there any road map for integration with other plug ins? jqGrid, jQuery UI, etc?

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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by john west
on 10/22/2009 9:27 PM

Can I ask a question about binding? One-way binding is great, but I need to bind a sys:if statement, so that if a referenced property in the sys:if statement changes, the sys:if statement itself needs to be re-evaluated. Is there any way to do that?

John
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by kitchenaid parts
on 10/24/2009 9:23 AM

I'm waiting for the js file script folding support.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by MarcelDevG
on 10/25/2009 2:10 PM

Stephen,
If MS is dropping the ASP.NET word (which isn't a bad idea), why keeping it on ASPNET.codeplex.com ? :)

I know, naming/positioning products is hard!
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Kitchen Cabinet Handles
on 10/27/2009 12:09 PM

that is a great and a very useful article.

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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by sms kostenlos
on 10/28/2009 6:12 PM

Hey Stephen thanx for the article. Is very helpeful for me.

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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Andy
on 10/29/2009 4:06 PM

Good to hear that out-of-band will keep the innovation coming.

I'd be interested to see some samples using Sys.Observer and Sys.bind with other client frameworks like ExtJS or richer UI, with more complex layouts and binding.

I've been watching the MVVM pattern getting a lot of interest in the WPF/Silverlight community, and realised how useful the latest core (binding/change tracking) features of Microsoft Ajax Library could be to use MVVM in javascript, with MVC/AtomPub/ADO.NET Data Services on the server.

My sample Views use ExtJS and ViewModels use Sys.Observer and jQuery Ajax calls, with Sys.bind bindings to properties of Extjs controls against the ViewModel.

It works quite well, but there are areas that would still be helpful to include in a base library (in particular, metadata on models, which is increasingly getting included across MVC, in Entity models, in XML, but not really available on the client side in javascript). And clarity on conventions, such as binding conventions requiring controls from other client frameworks to be wrapped for use with Sys.bind.

Anyway, would be interesting to know if anyone else is looking into MVVM in javascript. I've only seen one mention of it on Stack Overflow!
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Sathyan
on 10/30/2009 4:52 AM

Dear Stephen,
Thanks for the nice post. Its great news knowing about this game changer. I do have a problem - the VS 2010 training labs that I got from Channel 9 do NOT work with Preview 6 - (example: the client template stuff). But that works like a charm with Preview 4. Things have changed i understand but it would be great if you can explain a few things - for example if I use the start.js how to include all scripts that I need? I did see one article James Senior but that did not help in my case and if I include them with Script Manager I get a web resources reference error - Can you please do a quick sample project with Preview 6, Beta 2 and Client templates? Please....
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by rice military townhomes
on 11/1/2009 12:47 AM

I agree that calling Microsoft Ajax Libarary ASP.Net AJAX reqally confuses a lot of people. I am actually one of those people. Well, I'm surprise that it is only now that you think of changing the name. Anyway, I guess everything would be clear for a lot of people from now on.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by webtasarım
on 11/1/2009 7:58 AM


that is a great article.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by jazzycristina
on 11/2/2009 7:32 AM

It Would be really nice to have documentation of the library as a complement of being able to read the code
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Timeshare News
on 11/6/2009 8:33 PM

New name is definitely a bit more catchy. good call.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by lgmorand
on 11/8/2009 12:49 PM

I don't find the roadmap for MS Ajax Library. Because it's an always-evolving project, it should be normal but can we expect a v1.0 at the end of march. A release available at the same time as ASP.Net 4.0?

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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by Touchworks
on 11/9/2009 3:17 AM

An informative and useful article.....Thankz.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by namhyuk
on 11/10/2009 5:26 PM

cool. thank you.
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# The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by hotels indonesia
on 11/23/2009 7:06 AM

confuse about ajax and visual studio..can u help me explain more..big thanks for kinda share
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by abercrombie and fitch
on 11/25/2009 10:32 PM

One day I'll learn to RTFM before I post comments with dumb questions. The range of options is really impressive for what is essentially a very simple tool. Can see this being an integral part of our build process.
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# re: The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2
Posted by dizi izle
on 1/12/2010 2:01 AM

I have forum
downloaded the minifier from codeplex and tried them on JS files in dizi izle
one of my project, the tool reduced the file size by 25% in normal mode and 50% in hyper mode. Th
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