Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
Microsoft Atlas: Ajax all along
Microsoft got hit by the Ajax term like everyone else. They have been “doing Ajax” for a long time, as many companies had been, before the Ajax term took off. If you looked at ASP.NET 2.0 (Whidbey) you would have seen Ajax all over the shop. They have components that you can drag and drop in that use Ajaxian techniques.
They want the world to know that “WE DID AJAX!”, so they packaged together Atlas:
Microsoft’s Atlas is a “Web client framework” designed to make the job of building AJAX-style applications simpler, said Charles Fitzgerald, the company’s general manager for platform technologies.
“People who do (AJAX development) are rocket scientists,” Fitzgerald said. “In some ways, this papers over the mess that is JavaScript development. It’s easy-to-build ‘spaghetti’ code.”
Atlas–which is a downloadable piece of JavaScript code–gives developers a more structured environment for building applications, providing time-saving services such as an object model and debugging, he said. It will work across any Web browser that supports AJAX technologies.
Read more
Microsoft Wants a Piece of the Ajax Action
Microsoft Plans An Alternative To Ajax





AJAX has been around for a while. Just not by that name. Check out what Jon Udell has to say (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/05/25.html) about “serious rocket science” regarding TIBCO’s rich Internet application framework called “General Interface” that “encapsulates the complexities of AJAX development” — so you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to deliver powerful applications.You can also now sign up for access to TIBCO’s software (which has been out since 2001) here: http://www.tibco.com/mk/2005/ajax.html