As we reported back in September, the functionality is a modest fraction of what Microsoft has had out in community previews. Specifically, it includes two features: the script manager, which is a proxy that marshals script from the server, and the update panel, which is the mechanism for the partial page refreshes characteristic of Ajax web clients.
All this is no mystery, as Microsoft declared last July as to which features would get on the officially supported fast track, and which pieces would linger in the test tube. According to Keith Smith, group product manager for Microsoft’s core web platform, whatever features that are in community preview will continue to be available in source code so developers can continue to play with it.
In actuality, the features supported by Microsoft are equivalent to what’s already available on the Java side (features that partially refresh the screen and hide the JavaScript). The difference is that Microsoft leverages the fact that it is a large company and is providing 24 x 7 support, which you probably won’t find with most Ajax tooling.
The ASP.NET Ajax 1.0 extensions are now officially available for download, and will be part of Orcas, the code name for eventual successor to Visual Studio 2005.
