ASP.NET 4 Unleashed

Server-Side Ajax Versus Client-Side Ajax

Microsoft has a complicated relationship with Ajax. On the one hand, the company wants to provide its existing ASP.NET developers with an easy way to implement Ajax functionality without having to learn JavaScript. On the other hand, Microsoft recognizes that the client is a powerful area to enable developers. Therefore, it wants to provide web developers with the tools they need to build pure client-side Ajax applications. For these reasons, Microsoft has both a server-side Ajax framework and a client-side Ajax framework.

If you want to retrofit an existing ASP.NET application to take advantage of Ajax, you can take advantage of Microsoft’s server-side AJAX framework. To take advantage of the server-side ...