I remember a rule I had which went something like this, "never work with or download for 'serious' use, anything with the label "BETA" on it" (granted this usually applied to IM prog updates, new OSs etc). But would I listen to my rule? Normally... yes! ... but with all the buzz about ASP.NET AJAX, formerly code named "Atlas", this time I made an exception and rushed to the site to get the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Beta 2 Release (released 9 days ago ie Nov 4th 2006 - yea, I'm right on the ball).
So I went and got the necessary installs, dlls etc. and honestly, from what I see here things look .. promising. The main problem I've had thus far though and this I also admit is totally understandable, is that finding nice examples on how things are done IN THIS CURRENT BETA release can be a pain (especially when some developers who really have good intentions post code but forget to document which release their code is geared for).
What makes this problem more frustrating is that from what I see (and because I'm new to Beta releases this I guess may be a n00b exaggeration), the differences in the Beta versions is well not small eg. there are changes in tag name prefixes, how they are formatted, where elements and tags go etc.
I'm saying all this to remind myself (and whoever's reading) to keep my (your) distance or.. be cautious with that word 'Beta'. Experiment? yea sure, look at the features? yea sure, think about development? errr... take a rain check. In addition, keep in mind that some of the features in earlier Beta versions may not even be in the final product release (this relates to all Beta's but I'm mostly speaking about ASP.NET AJAX).
So now I'm at the stage of tinkering and hoping that some good/useful code/examples/documentation to suit this Beta 2 release will soon emerge. A good thing though is that "the fully supported version of ASP.NET AJAX that is scheduled for release near year-end" (Ref)... So, let's hope that means late November.
(Btw, don't ask me about the topic, I got a bit happy, :\)
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