Subject:   A quick overview of an emerging technolgy
Date:   2006-05-28 21:53:45
From:   Rick Sline
Rating:  StarStarStarStarStar

Atlas UpdatePanel Control is a short (57 pages), but value-packed description of this important new feature of Microsoft’s Ajax arsenal. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is one of the current buzz-words in the Web development field. It provides programmers a technology to significantly improve the perceived performance of Web applications generally through a combination of client-side scripting/updating and asynchronous callbacks to the Web Server, eliminating full postbacks and screen refreshes. Atlas is Microsoft’s implementation of this technology and was recently released as CTP (Community Technology Preview).


The book is apparently only available as a .PDF download from the publisher’s site at this time - due to it’s brevity and the probability that it will become obsolete in a few months with the next version release of the software (Beta? Release Candidate? Version 1.0?)


For those of us who like to venture to the “bleeding edge”, this material is interesting and informative. I’ll probably wait until a month or two into Version 1.0 before deciding whether it’s appropriate incorporate Atlas into any of my production work, but it’s fun to look at it now.


Some interesting key points brought out:


How to utilize the UpdatePanel control in Atlas from Visual Studio including

    Adding Microsoft.Web.Atlas.dll to the application’s bin folder or the GAC

    Changes to Web.Config

    Http module registration (optional, but recommended for improved performance)

    Adding a ScriptManager control to encapsulate the UpdatePanel control(s) on each page


Common sense programming says to give the user feedback that something is going on during long-running process and this of course is included in the instructions. Also mentioned in this regard is providing a Cancel button – yes a good idea, but… in the Ajax/Atlas world, at least with the UpdatePanel cancel does not cancel the underlying process (i.e. a file update, etc.) it merely cancels a refresh to user’s browser when the process is finished. If a “permanent” state change was done, the user may not know that.


There are several clear examples given complete with html and .NET code – C# and VB both.


The topic obviously isn’t for beginners, but for those who are already working with ASP.NET 2.0 and wanting to provide a better user experience, it’s a good starting point. At $9.99 for the download, it’s worth the money and the read. I haven’t had a chance to try the examples, but in reviewing the code, there didn’t seem to be any glaring errors.