Other Ajax Frameworks
Apart from Microsoft's ASP.NET Ajax, there are plenty of other Ajax frameworks. We discuss only the major ones—that is, those frameworks that are widely in use. Our list includes the following:
- Atlas
- AJAXPro.NET
- MagicAJAX.NET
- Anthem.NET
Atlas, as mentioned previously, is the older form of Microsoft Ajax Library. It is a framework that integrates the Client-Side JavaScript Library and is freely available and can be used with ASP.NET 2.0 to develop Ajax applications. It has cross-browser support and exposes a number of object-oriented APIs, which can be used to develop web applications that minimize server hits or postbacks and perform asynchronous calls.
AJAXPro.NET is an Ajax library for use with the ASP.NET engine. The best part of AJAXPro.NET is that you can use it in the Internet Explorer event if the ActiveX object is disabled in your browser. Furthermore, it has certain distinct advantages over Atlas. It does not have any web service layer and is compliant with both versions of .NET—.NET 1.x and .NET 2.0—and is simple to understand and implement in your web applications.
MagicAJAX.NET, or the Magic Ajax engine for use with the ASP.NET engine, is also a freely available Ajax framework. It is a flexible Ajax framework for use in the ASP.NET platform. It was published in an article at www.codeproject.com. Since then, it was improved a lot and was later provided free at www.sourceforge.net.
Anthem.NET is an open source Ajax framework that is compliant with ASP.NET 1.x and 2.0 versions. This framework was developed by Jason Diamond and contains a rich set of Ajax-enabled controls that can be used to Ajax-enable your web applications. You have support for View State in Anthem.NET with a rich set of controls and server-side events.