Over the past month or so, I've been spending my time gearing up for a summer project. This project consists of a few things, but the biggy is Microsoft Atlas.

First, let me say that I'm a do it yourself kind of guy. I like to reinvent the wheel a thousand times over. Simply stated: I don't like to use other people's code; Ajax frameworks are no exception. So while I looked at learning Ajax as a "I need to" type of thing, I still kept it in my head that I'll use my own "framework" to do the job. Heh.

After writing a few simple test cases (and I'm working on a server control now), I can say that Microsoft did a bang up job on Atlas; so much so, that I plan on implementing my new "blog" tools with Atlas. It really is that frickin' good. For example, I can write a control that'll interface with a MSSQL database, search for data whose criteria's pulled from an <input /> element, and display the results without writing a single line of client-side code. Everything is either in C#, or using ASP.NET/Atlas controls.

ScottGu does the same thing with a to-do list (WMV video), and there's a host of videos at the Atlas site.

There is a downside to the technology, however. The framework works very well under IE an Firefox; it doesn't work well in Opera and Safari. This means I won't be building any Web apps using Atlas unless it's something isolated to where I know either Firefox or IE will be used (like my admin tools). Atlas is still pre-release software, so hopefully things with Opera and Safari will be ironed out.

Oh, yes, I'm beginning to care about Safari; in fact, I plan on getting a MacBook this summer =)