Did Client Templates in ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 get dropped entirely, in favor of the jQuery Templates plug-in?

Question

I think that Microsoft dropped client templates from the AJAX Toolkit in favor of jQuery Templates plug-in. I'm trying to find full documentation on this and except for some "will do" blog posts such as this one I am unable to find anything except @#$%-loads of bogus, obsolete documentation and magazine articles from the Preview / Beta days of ASP.NET AJAX 4.0.

Can anyone please confirm that the ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 Client Templates feature is, in fact, jQuery Templates, officially, and that there is absolutely no Sys.* equivalent in the current Microsoft libraries for client templates?

Answer 1

Yes, the entire ASP.NET Ajax Library, not to be confused with ASP.NET AJAX or the AJAX Control Toolkit, was abandoned before an official 1.0 release and should not be used going forward. It won't receive any further development.

Instead of the DataView, use jQuery Templates and the Data Link plugin. Instead of the Sys.require script loader, look into JSDefer. Those plugins are being developed by the ASP.NET team and are the next evolution of what they were working on in the ASP.NET Ajax Library.

Again, this abandonment does not apply to the traditional ASP.NET AJAX stuff that includes the ScriptManager, page methods, UpdatePanel, ASMX ScriptServices, etc. Those things aren't in any imminent danger of going away. The similar naming of those projects is very confusing.

Answer 2

I'm a principal development lead at Microsoft on the ASP.NET team and I'm involved in the jQuery plugin development as well.

I'd like to make some clarifications to Dave Ward's statements as well as some clarifications and corrections to some of stimpy77's comments to Dave's answer.

Microsoft's investments in AJAX have been wide and varied over the last several years and I'd like to speak to each of those investments:

1. The core ASP.NET AJAX library, which ships with ASP.NET and the .NET Framework. This includes the server and client functionality needed for features such as the ScriptManager and UpdatePanel as well as several other features. This is 100% supported by Microsoft.

2. The Ajax Control Toolkit library, which builds on top of the ASP.NET AJAX library. This is a free add-on library to ASP.NET that includes over 30 rich controls. The development of this library is owned by the Outercurve Foundation and it has not been abandonded - although progress has been slow recently. Contributions to the project are maintained by Microsoft but anyone in the community is welcome to submit patches and new features.

3. The extra Sys.* libraries that included previews of a client script templating library and additional features. The previews of that feature have stood for what they are - previews and prototypes of investments that Microsoft believed (and still believes) will be significant in the direction of AJAX development. There are no plans to continue the development of those previews because of item #4, as follows:

4. The jQuery plugins, including (but not limited to) jQuery Templating, jQuery Data Linking, and jQuery Globalization. These have a lot of the same functionality as the scripts listed in item #3, though they are not an exact one-to-one mapping. Our work on these plugins (with Boris Moore as their main developer) is supported and involved with the jQuery Core and jQuery UI teams. These plugins are all under active development.

I hope that I was able to clarify where Microsoft stands on the development and investment of AJAX functionality.

Thanks,

Eilon