Microsoft Releases Atlas

Jason Lind writes "Much earlier than anticipated, Microsoft announced the release of Atlas this afternoon at MIX 06. For those who don't know, Atlas is Microsoft's AJAX API for ASP.NET 2, which they claim will greatly reduce the effort in developing AJAX style applications on their platform."

Comments

Where's the beef?

[AKAImBatman]

For those who don't know, Atlas is Microsoft's AJAX API for ASP.NET 2, which they claim will greatly reduce the effort in developing AJAX style applications on their platform.

Really? I thought it was a rocket.* </sarcasm>

Sorry, but I'm decidedly unimpressed. I was sitting here thinking that Microsoft might be in a position to nail the AJAX market with ASP.NET. If so, then there would need to be an immediate cross-platform response. As much as I'd like to be releaved that Microsoft hasn't taken the lead, I'm finding myself shocked at how absolutely terrible this library is. There's not a shred of AJAX to be found.

In a nutshell, this library is a collection of ASP custom tags (similar to the ones that have existed in JSP for half a decade or so) that produce common controls like buttons, advertisements, tables with data, and a few other bits and pieces. There is no XMLHttpRequest communication that I can find, and precious little DHTML. Unless I'm missing something, this library is a wash.

Is Microsoft really having that much trouble understanding a concept that they invented? Because this library certainly suggests this is the case.

* Sorry for the sarcasm, it's not directed at the poster. Just my own annoyance at Microsoft polluting the technology sphere with such nonsense.

Watch the video

[LibertineR]

A lot of responses, not a lot of information. Some of the more troll-like comments are addressed in the video demo at : mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/uifx/asp_net_atlas.wmv

Re:Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer..

[Sqwubbsy]

Actually, from personal experience, some of the code we've been mucking with using ASP.NET 2.0 has been just fine regardless of browser. Not bad considering Safari's lack of standards compliance.

To your original point, any system generated code is potentially fraught with peril...question is, how easy is it for you to muck by hand and clean it up. That is one of the big advantages of Ruby on Rails and it seems like the same deal with ASP.NET 2, although there are a lot more layers and code libraries with ASP.NET.