Stephen Walther, ASP.NET expert and author of ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed said today following his presentation, "Building Portals with ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts," that the year-end planned release of AJAX Extensions for ASP.NET, code named Atlas, is not living up to the vision of AJAX.

Speaking at the the DevConnections conference in Las Vegas, Walther admitted that Atlas will provide definite server side benefits for implementing AJAX. These benefits include:

• No need to know JavaScript
• Enterprises can upgrade incrementally.
• It's easy. Programmers drop a Web control into an Atlas UpdatePanel; the control automatically gets AJAX functionality
• The product is free
• The Version 1.0 release will receive full support from Microsoft.

However, Walther said, on the down side: all the client side functionality that makes AJAX so compelling will not be among the supported features. The only AJAX control that will be supported in the Version 1.0 release is the UpdatePanel.

Walters asserted that the real power of AJAX is its ability for client side JavaScript to perform asynchronous callbacks to Web Services on a variety of servers. The operating system independent nature of Web services does not really compel Microsoft to support full fledged AJAX. Keeping Atlas tightly coupled to Windows servers is in Microsoft's best interests, according to Walthers.

However, according the Walther, ASP.NET AJAX components that focus on client side functionality will be available under some sort of supported CTP (Community Technology Preview) or Value Added release. However,, these releases will be subject to a lot of change.

According to Walther, the Version 1.0 release, "is boring and not true to the Atlas vision."