Introducing Microsoft® ASP.NET AJAX

Introduction

AJAX stands for “Asynchronous JavaScript and XML,” and it’s a sort of blanket term coined in 2005 to indicate rich, highly interactive, and responsive Web applications that do a lot of work on the client and place out-of-band calls to the server. An out-of-band call is a server request that results in a page update rather than a page replacement. The net effect is that an AJAX Web application tends to look like a classic desktop Microsoft Windows application and has advanced features such as drag-and-drop and asynchronous tasks, a strongly responsive and nonflickering user interface, and far less user frustration.

ASP.NET AJAX Extensions is a significant extension to the ASP.NET platform that makes AJAX-style functionalities possible ...