My 12th Toolbox column in the December 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine is now avaiable online, marking my one year anniversary writing this column! The December issue examines three products:
- AxoSoft OnTime 2006 - issue and defect tracking software.
- Automation Anywhere - a straightforward program for defining and implementing automated tasks (which can include GUI-based actions as well as system- and programmatic-based ones).
- SpreadsheetGear for .NET - a .NET component for generating and working with Excel spreadsheets.
This month's issue reviewed Laurence Moroney's book Foundations of Atlas. Atlas (now renamed to the Microsoft AJAX Library, the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions, and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit) provides a set of controls and libraries for easily creating AJAX-enabled ASP.NET web applications. From the review:
For those itching to use Atlas to create responsive ASP.NET applications, check out Foundations of Atlas by Laurence Moroney (Apress, 2006). The book begins with a good overview of AJAX, followed by a look at how Atlas simplifies AJAX development by providing a set of client and server controls that work together to emit the needed client-side script and server-side functionality to participate in asynchronous postbacks.
The next several chapters focus on examples and walkthroughs that show how to use the Atlas controls, including an entire chapter on data binding. The last chapter looks at building an AJAX-enabled financial research Web application from the ground up. The chapter does a great job at tying together the lessons learned throughout the book and illustrating a real-world benefit from using AJAX techniques with Atlas.
As always, if you have any suggestions for products or books to review for the Toolbox column, please send them into toolsmm@microsoft.com.