Does ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 tout client-side templating with the jQuery Templates plug-in?

Question

I am a little lost on what happened with ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 with regard to the push for client templates with the jQuery Templates plug-in (which is still in beta) and/or whatever proprietary flavor of the same thing that it had. I thought I heard months ago that Microsoft had abandoned the push for jQuery Templates and that ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 was released (??) with these features that had been featured in the betas and CTPs stripped out. Is this true?

More specifically, what features were removed from ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 between the big, heavily touted preview and the RTM? What stayed?

Answer 1

The ASP.NET Ajax Library, not to be confused with ASP.NET AJAX or the AJAX Control Toolkit, was abandoned before its 1.0 release. ASP.NET 4.0's built-in AJAX features are basically identical to what shipped with 3.5, with a couple very minor changes to the client-side library (MicrosoftAjax.js). The similarity in their naming is very confusing, but the two projects weren't tightly coupled, so don't interpret the death of one to apply to the other.

In terms of templating specifically, the DataView that you've seen in the betas and CTPs of the ASP.NET Ajax Library is not going to ship. It shouldn't be used going forward. Focus on using a combination of the jQuery Templates and Data Link plugins to replicate that same functionality.