This Monday we shipped Beta2 of the ASP.NET AJAX framework – formerly known as “Atlas”.  You can visit the ASP.NET AJAX website or Scott Guthrie’s blog article for details.  The bits can be downloaded from here.  

We have made sure that the already shipped version of Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Web Developer 2005 can be used for developing web sites/applications targeting these new extensions.  We’re also investing heavily in better tools support for ASP.NET AJAX in the upcoming Visual Studio “Orcas” release.  Specifically we will be investing in better JScript intellisense and debugging as well as support for the new ASP.NET AJAX framework in design view.  In the meanwhile, you should have good success with the 2005 family of tools that you are already using today.

Finally I’d like to draw your attention to a great set of “how-to” videos that will help you get started and a set of tutorials.  Have fun “AJAX-enabling” your existing ASP.NET sites!

— Bash