RESEARCH

Ignore the Hype: Atlas is Just AJAX in Microsoft Clothing

IT developers must avoid the pointless comparison of Atlas to Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX). Atlas is a library; AJAX is a collection of mature Web technologies. Spend more time focusing on which AJAX libraries provide better productivity for creating Web applications with rich, interactive interfaces.

Is Atlas AJAX 2.0? Not Really

Atlas is simply another AJAX library, this time built by Microsoft and incorporated as a package for Visual Studio 2005 instead of by a small third-party developer. It is freely available for download from the ASP.NET Web site. Other AJAX libraries are, in some cases, more mature than Atlas. For example, the AJAX support in Ruby on Rails is already easy to deploy and use. IT developers should therefore ignore claims of Atlas being the next developmental stage of AJAX because other third-party developers are already building solid AJAX development tools.

The "Problem" with AJAX

Many proponents of...