"A few weeks ago Microsoft announced new naming for the product formerly known as Prince – eh, ATLAS. The names Microsoft came up with are the ultra-catchy Microsoft AJAX Library for the client side JavaScript framework and Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? All kidding about the boring names aside the new names are descriptive of the functionality and they include AJAX in the name so it’s quite clear what their purpose is. I suspect it will take a while to lose the ATLAS moniker though and I’ll use it here to keep it short.

The Roadmap

Once codenames like ATLAS come off, it’s usually a sign that the technology is heading down the road to the marketing department which in turn means that it’s getting at least somewhat close to a release cycle and feature lockdown. Scott Guthrie announced the roadmap (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/) for ATLAS which calls for a 1.0 release sometime at the end of the year with a public beta and release candidate between now and that time.

This initial release is set to be a ‘core’ product that provides the base AJAX client and server functionality. According to Microsoft this will include most but not all of the features that are currently supported by the ATLAS CTPs. The rest of the controls are still going to be provided but they may not be part of the core supported set for the 1.0 release and will continue to be improved upon with further CTPs.

It’s a bit confusing, but the goal is to push out a full release of ATLAS soon so that developers can include “official and supported” Microsoft AJAX technology in their applications without running pre-release software. I know this has been a concern for me personally as I’ve not been able to integrate ATLAS into my own tools due to issues with unsupported software for our customers. So to date I continue to use and update my own AJAX library while spending my time getting up to speed with ATLAS.

The 1.0 release is a framework release only and doesn’t include any tool support, so don’t expect better JavaScript or special designer support for creating client side code or controls. Tool support is scheduled for the next release of Visual Studio code named Orcas which is rumored to go into early previews around the time ATLAS 1.0 ships. Orcas focuses on the next generation of tools from Microsoft including Vista and .NET Framework 3.0 support tools as well as tools for the ASP.NET AJAX tools. The final release of this next version of Visual Studio however is a long ways off – Microsoft has hinted at projected release at the end of next year, but I wouldn’t hold my breath given the scheduling delays Microsoft developer tools have been going through for the last few major release cycles. In short, for the moment don’t consider getting improved tool support for your Microsoft AJAX applications any time soon." (West Wind)