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Book review - Foundations of Atlas

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After two weeks of holidays I'm back at work. I really enjoyed the time with my family and being completely disconnected from work and the net. During these two weeks I took the time to do some reading on ASP.NET Atlas.

A couple of weeks ago - at TechEd US - I got myself the book "Foundations of Atlas - Rapid Ajax Development with ASP.NET 2.0". Keith Smith was the technical reviewer for this book written by Laurence Moroney. The book starts by describing the evolution of user interface software. Next it discusses the basics of AJAX and how it can be used to create thin client applications. Then Atlas, and how it works in the context of ASP.NET, is introduced. Two chapters cover the client controls in Atlas and two chapters explain the server controls and how to use them. Databinding is covered in a separate chapter. The final chapter of the book walks the reader through building a sample application using ASP.NET and Atlas.

I enjoyed reading this book. It really covers the fundamentals of the technology but also answer the why-questions of some implementations. Despite it's an introduction it gives a good insight in the technology and lets you start building Atlas apps. The reader gets a good overview on Microsoft's answer (Atlas) to the AJAX frameworks available. This book is however not providing an insight on how Atlas is going to evolve in the next months. Given that AJAX has been around for quite a while, a lot of people might get interested on how Microsoft will use Atlas in his own products to build new stunning UIs in the browser. So there's some room left for updates or further exploring of the subject but after all as an introduction is worthwile reading.

I'm not sure which CTP build of Atlas has been used for the demos but some implementations have changed in recent builds. So if you're starting with Atlas development it's advisable to have a look at the ASP.NET Atlas documentation and Resources, the Atlas Control Toolkit and the available sample applications.

The complete source code for the book is available for download from the APress site. A sample chapter (6) on introducing server controls in Atlas is also available.

Errata and source code for this book can be found on Laurence's blog:

Tags: Microsoft, Ajax, ASP.NET Atlas