Q&A: Microsoft Touts New Ajax Tools

"InformationWeek: Tell me about Microsoft's strategic approach to using and promoting Ajax-- why is getting developers to start writing Web apps using Ajax important, and what is Atlas all about?
Goldfarb: First of all, we need to understand the need driving the interest in Ajax, which as a style of Web development bears its roots in what Microsoft invented almost 8 years ago with IE4 (DHTML) and IE5 (XMLHttp). Most of what is fueling the interest, in this somewhat old technology, has been frustration around how to create richer applications on the Web. Recently I think two important things happened to revitalize interest in Ajax. First, a wider number of browsers have provided support for the technologies developers need for Ajax- style development, and second, there has been a new focus and interest in delivering better user experiences for customers. Microsoft is distinctly focused on driving richer user experiences on the Web through to the client and devices for our customers. For the Web there are two challenges to this. The first is the limitation of application development within the browser, and the second is development complexity. When looking at the Ajax approach to Web development, we realized this was way more difficult than it needed to be. As a result, we created Atlas to help make Ajax- style development easier, and more approachable for a broader range of developers. We believe that Atlas will be as good as is gets on the browser and will enable the broad masses of developers to easily take their Web applications to the next level. To me, the most important part of our strategy with Atlas is to the take the rocket science out of Ajax and make it easier for our customers to create more compelling experiences on the Web." Source: informationweek.com