A practical tutorial to using Microsoft AJAX to enhance the user experience of your ASP.NET web applications covering the most up to date versions of the AJAX tools. With ASP.NET AJAX (formerly known as ATLAS) developers can quickly create rich and responsive web pages with efficient server communication by simply adding a few server controls to their pages. Because ASP.NET AJAX is integrated with ASP.NET, developers have full access to the built-in ASP.NET 2.0 application services and the entire .NET Framework. This book is the most practical and efficient resource a reader can get to enter the exciting world of AJAX in ASP.NET. Targeting the most recent version of the ASP.NET AJAX tools, this book will teach you how to create faster, lighter, and richer web applications by using the Microsoft AJAX technologies to their full potential. Beginning with a hands-on tour of the basic technologies associated with AJAX, JavaScript, XMLHttpRequest, JSON, and the DOM, you'll move on to a crash course in the Microsoft AJAX tools. You'll understand the architecture of the Microsoft AJAX components, how they all fit together, and exactly what they can do for you. At every stage of your journey, you'll be able to try out examples to illuminate the theory, and consolidate your understanding. In addition to learning about the client and server controls, you'll also see how to handle errors and debug your ASP.NET AJAX applications. To get your client pages interacting with your server, the Microsoft AJAX framework allows you to consume web services on the client without having to worry about the underlying protocol used for exchanging the data. You will see how to create ASP.NET web services in practice, and consume them in your AJAX applications. To get your client pages interacting with servers on other domains, the Microsoft AJAX framework provides bridges that allow you to make cross-domain calls seamlessly. This book shows you how this works and how to implement it, including how to consume services from Amazon's ECS (E-Commerce Services). Microsoft AJAX brings the power of the ASP.NET data presentation server controls to the client, enhancing the power and responsiveness of controls such as the GridView and DetailsView. You will learn about using the data client controls to create truly responsive web applications that interact seamlessly not just with your servers and your data, but also with other servers and other sources of data should you choose. This book is a practical tutorial to get you confident and comfortable working with the Microsoft AJAX suite. Packed with step-by-step examples and detailed explanations of how the examples work, this book is the ideal first step into the exciting world of AJAX in ASP.NET. This book is written for ASP.NET developers who not only want to understand how Microsoft AJAX will impact on the way they develop web applications, but also want to make the transition to better, more responsive applications as easily as possible. You will need access to either Visual Studio Web Developer Express or Visual Studio .NET 2005. All the code examples are in C#.