Chapter 4: Introducing the Microsoft AJAX Library

In the previous chapters you've learned the basics of AJAX and object-oriented JavaScript, and in Chapter 1 you even created a very simple AJAX-enabled form validation page using ASP.NET code for the server.

On small projects it's acceptable to implement the features you need from scratch, occasionally reinventing the wheel. However, when developing more complex ASP. NET projects, the decision of "whether to use ASP.NET AJAX or not" becomes "how much of ASP.NET AJAX to use ". In this chapter we'll quickly investigate the features offered by the Microsoft AJAX Library, and at the end we'll even use it to update the Quickstart example that was presented in Chapter 1.

In this chapter, you will:

• Learn about the components of the ASP.NET AJAX Framework and the Microsoft AJAX Library
• Understand the asynchronous communication model of the Microsoft AJAX Library
• Go through a quickstart exercise

Let's get started!