jQuery vs AJAX toolkit. It turns out Microsoft ditched AJAX libraries of its own (ASP.NET AJAX, MS Ajax Library, AJAX control toolkit) in favor of jQuery. AJAX control toolkit is still alive, but it is managed by a 3rd party company called SuperExpert (www.superexpert.com).

Strangely enough, the talk was not about AJAX calls per se, but about various controls, that were explored in alphabetical order, starting from Accordion and going down to calendars, combo boxes, etc. Truth be told, I left somewhere around the letter F.

It also looks like you still want to use good old AJAX toolkit for AJAX calls to ASMX and WCF web services. jQuery also supports that, but with less options or whatever. I am not a real web developer. 🙂 This presentation should have been called ‘moving from AJAX Control Toolkit controls to jQuery controls’. Anyhow, some jQuery controls are really cool and give your application very slick appearance if you use them right.