Scott Guthrie: "ASP.NET AJAX support in SharePoint 2007 coming later this year"

Yesterday I attended one of the sessions Scott Guthrie presented at the VISUG event in Mechelen (Belgium). In this session Scott covered some of his ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET AJAX tips and tricks: cool stuff. When started talking about ASP.NET AJAX the audience (+300 people!) started asking some questions, in my turn I asked Scott about using ASP.NET AJAX in SharePoint 2007. Scott confirmed Daniel's statements (not supported, only use the the client side scripts, server-side controls don't work, etc), but more interesting; he told the audience that ASP.NET AJAX will be supported in SharePoint 2007. How is Microsoft going to pull off this trick? <quote>ASP.NET Ajax will be supported in SharePoint when we release a service pack for SharePoint, we will ship it later this year.</quote> Great!!

Another statement that Scott made, (which actually contradicts Daniel's statement) was about using the UpdatePanel in web parts. According to Scott you can make use of the UpdatePanel in SharePoint, when it's hosted in a web part. Mmmm, let's find some more information about this. I'll definitely need the help of my colleague Kevin (hey Kevin, now it's really time to start a blog!!) to get me on speed with ASP.NET AJAX.

Side note: kudos to VISUG (Visual Studio User Group Belgium) and MSDN Belux for organizing this (free!) event, a job well done! It was great to meet so many (old) friends, ex-colleagues, students, ... during the break, I didn't even have time to say hi to everybody I know.

Side note 2: the SmartPart also got some exposure! Scott mentioned it when he answered a question from the audience, I guess he didn't know that Belgium is not only the land of the chocolate, but it's also the land of the SmartPart! :-)