Microsoft® ASP.NET and AJAX: Architecting Web Applications

Chapter 5. JavaScript Libraries

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

— Jack London

If you look back at the events that have characterized the past five years of Web programming, you see that server controls have been welcomed as a powerful productivity tool since the advent of ASP.NET but are being belittled as AJAX gains wider acceptance. Although server controls often boost your productivity, the HTML they generate usually can’t be modified to any great extent, and sometimes they don’t work well (if at all) with partial page updates. Developers today are instead turning to frameworks such as the Microsoft AJAX library and creating their own client applications that embrace AJAX, even at the cost of increased JavaScript ...