Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was released this week and one of the first things that I hope you notice is that it no longer contains the latest version of ASP.NET AJAX. What happened? Where did AJAX go? Just like Sting and The Police, just like Phil Collins and Genesis, just like Greg Page and the Wiggles, AJAX has gone out of band! We are starting a solo career. A Name Change First things first. In previous releases, our Ajax framework was named ASP.NET AJAX. We now have changed the name of the framework to the Microsoft Ajax Library. There are two...

Last night, Scott Guthrie announced that the ASP.net team published a free tool that enables you to improve the performance of your Ajax applications by reducing the size of its JavaScript files. The new tool is named the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. You can read Scott Guthrie’s announcement here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/10/15/announcing-microsoft-ajax-library-preview-6-and-the-microsoft-ajax-minifier.aspx And you can download and install the free tool from the CodePlex website here: http://aspnet.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=34488 In this blog entry, I explain how you can take advantage of the Microsoft Ajax from the command-line and when you are using Visual Studio. Overview of the Microsoft Ajax Minifier The Microsoft Ajax Minifier was created by Ron Logan (who is clearly...

We just released a new version of the AJAX Control Toolkit today. This new version includes significant bug fixes and two new controls. You can download the latest version – the September 30th release – from the CodePlex website right here: http://ajaxcontroltoolkit.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=33804 Read the following tutorial to learn how to install the AJAX Control Toolkit: http://www.asp.net/learn/Ajax-Control-Toolkit/tutorial-47-cs.aspx In this blog entry, I provide a brief walkthrough of the two new controls included with this release and list the new bug fixes. Seadragon Control The Seadragon control enables you to pan, zoom, and make an image full screen. The control performs all of these fancy image effects using...