Nikhil Hotari

• ASP.NET provides for partial page rendering. The AJAX Control Toolkit is an open source project available from CodePlex
• Web services (to expose JSON, etc.)
• Script Framework

1. AJAX in the real world
   1. AJAX has become mainstream
      1. users expect it
      2. subtle use of AJX is usually effective
      3. don't have to go overboard with lots of AJAX
   2. it's about creating better UX
      1. fluid UI
      2. rich data viz
      3. intuitive data entry
   3. it's not just about updating page content
2. AJAX Challenges
   1. script complexity
   2. indexability and SEO
   3. navigation an bookmarkability
   4. increasing user expectations
   5. diagnostics, tracing, and monitoring

Takehomes

• Keep your code clean by using templates
• pull data into your page on load for non-script users (like search engines), but use a script to css-hide the "stuff" that will by displayed richer by your scripts (since it's a script you won't get the hide rule unless you have scripts on)
• use css rules to hide/show, the css engine is much faster than the script engine, so your page will act faster