Atlas & AJAX

The type of rich development that Atlas enables is broadly referred to as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which is a relatively new acronym for a combination of technologies that have been around for quite some time.

The Atlas features of ASP.NET are not just another AJAX script library for writing client-centric Web applications.

Atlas builds on the .NET Framework 2.0 and adds support for better utilizing the capabilities of client-side JavaScript and the XMLHttpRequest object.

The client script library simplifies the task of writing JavaScript and provides constructs for using an object-oriented approach to writing JavaScript.

It includes server-based features that make it easy to enrich existing ASP.NET applications, as well as a client script library that is used by the Atlas controls and services.

Scenarios enabled by Atlas are not limited to updating regions of the page with an asynchronous JavaScript call. You also get richer client experiences that would otherwise be impractical. [MSDNMag]

Samples highlighting the various scenarios are on the "Atlas" Control Toolkit website

Atlas (and therefore the Toolkit) currently [June 2006] supports IE6, IE7, FireFox (1.5.x), and Safari.

Atlas supports JSON

Hotmail, Start.com, Spaces, MSN.com utilize "Atlas"