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The client has a .NET framework and utilizes MS AJAX. Is this advantageous over jQuery as a library? I imagine since it is MS they would charge you more for extra functionality in case you wanted something more custom or is that incorrect?

pnuts
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ectype
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  • possible duplicate of [Microsoft AJAX client library vs jQuery ](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/609683/microsoft-ajax-client-library-vs-jquery) – David Jan 11 '11 at 20:54
  • Aren't they really intended to be used in concert anyways? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/17/microsoft_rachets_jquery_play/ – Doug Chamberlain Jan 11 '11 at 21:01

3 Answers3

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I would stay with jQuery:

  • very powerful
  • community-driven
  • quite good optimized for all major browsers
  • a lot of plugins available
  • has big active community (with John Resig as a head :)

maybe MS Ajax has some advantage if you use it together with .NET framework, but I'm not sure, since this is client side framework, so it should be independent.

Maxym
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  • Agreed. Microsoft's offerings in this area just haven't impressed me. The AJAX Toolkit stuff still seems to try to maintain Microsoft's approach to making web development into a series of drag-and-drop widgets which obscure the actual "web stuff" so developers "don't need to worry about it." More often than not, I've seen developers generate a ton of cruft with MS AJAX that could have been avoided with jQuery. – David Jan 11 '11 at 20:59
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No charge for MS Ajax. But at this point, JQuery is essentially MS Ajax, at least, in the sense that MS is fully behind it, as opposed to MS having control over it.

If you're referring to stuff like the UpdatePanel, then you get a small degree of productivity with a cost of transparency, in my opinion. There's nothing you can do with that stuff you can't do with JQuery, so my inclination is to just study JQuery. See Maxym's post above as well.

Chris B. Behrens
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  • So would you say that the client should work with MS AJAX since it is already bundled together with .NET? It appears that MS AJAX is jQuery with MS clothing. – ectype Jan 11 '11 at 21:10
  • JQuery is distinct from MS Ajax. But the fact that Ajax is bundled with Visual Studio is pretty much irrelevant; it's nearly zero effort to grab JQuery off of any of the public servers. Furthermore, and this is absolutely just my opinion, I think MS will eventually deprecate their proprietary library in favor of JQuery - JQuery has clearly won the hearts and minds of developers. So, in summary - use JQuery. – Chris B. Behrens Jan 11 '11 at 21:17
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MS AJAX vs. jQuery

is 

Ease of Use vs. Flexibility/Performance

MS AJAX allows you to quickly build ajax-enabled asp.net sites without requiring much knowledge of javascript - it emulates server-side framework; but that comes with a performance hit compared to jQuery.

Above is not the only difference, but the main one IMHO (I'm developing high-load sites, so performance makes all the difference for me)

Andrey
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