OReilly - Programming ASP.NET AJAX

This book is about ASP.NET AJAX (known in pre-release versions as “Atlas”), a collection of new Microsoft technologies that enables web developers—particularly ASP.NET 2.0 developers—to more easily create web sites with pages that use Ajax. Ajax-style pages provide a richer user interface. Such a page is also more responsive because it can respond immediately to users, and can interact more or less immediately with the server. ASP.NET AJAX also includes tools for creating mashups, web applications that combine content from multiple sites, typically using the APIs provided by third-party web services. We’ll be exploring all of these capabilities and more throughout the book. This chapter will get you started with ASP.NET AJAX while providing an overview of the underlying technology, and an architectural view of its operation.