Re: Ajax Lecture at the Mapua
A student/colleague during the recent Ajax Lecture at Mapua brought up
Anthem.NET. It is an Ajax "framework" for .Net web applications. Since it's the first time I heard about it, I took some time learning it and how it works.
From what I've found so far, it makes it easier for developers to build Ajax-based dotNet web application. For instance, with the widespread AjaxPro library, you have to manually implement Ajax on each method to be invoked. Ajax classes can be attributed as such, yes, but if you want to make custom controls with Ajax implementation, you have to make it for yourself. In a nutshell, since AjaxPro is an Ajax "wrapper" that you can just reference to, you still have to get your hands dirty in creating the actual rich controls Ajax is famous for.
Anthem.NET has made it easier by packaging custom controls wherein developers can use the familiar "runat=server" tag and attributes such as PreCallBackFunction, PostCallBackFunction and CallBackCancelledFunction (among many others). These attributes are valid server-side control attributes that can call client-side JavaScript functions. This is interesting because, you have more control on your Ajax invocations.
I believe the backbone of Anthem.NET is very much like AjaxPro. Only Anthem.NET pushed it further with pre-built classes and server-side controls. It's actually more like Atlas.
Read the complete post at http://alexrazon.blogspot.com/2006/08/re-ajax-lecture-at-mapua.html