I am currently using beta 2 of MS AJAX and it is most certainly not underpowered or hobbled. On the contrary it is very powerful, flexible and takes a pretty good line between appealing to the asp.net programmer who’s used to dealing with server side code, and javascript programmers who are used to the exact opposite.

The only thing (as far as I can tell) which is missing from this release and will be included with ORCAS is better design-time support, intellisense and debugging.

However, I think Microsoft really needs a kick in the ass with ATLAS because they are lagging big time. It’s been over year since ATLAS was announced and probably another half a year before that that Microsoft started work on it and at this point there’s not a lot showing for it.

When Version 1.0 of MS ATLAS ships at the end of the year it will be an underpowered shell of what it was meant to be. The full ‘vision’ of Microsoft’s AJAX platform won’t come to fruition until Orcas ships apparently and this is why Microsoft is seemingly holding back on this initial release. In the meantime we’ll have a hobbled AJAX platform from Microsoft which means we’ll have to rely either on more CTPs (pre beta, flux, unstable) or go with third parties that are extending MS Ajax the way Microsoft should have done in the first place.