Breaking changes in the ASP.NET AJAX Release Candidate
The long awaited ASP.NET AJAX Release Candidate is finally here! So the burning question is - what's new?! I wish I could tell you that this RC is composed of only minor bug fixes, but that wouldn't be fun. The most notable change was made to the extensions namespace. Here's a blurb from the release notes -
* The ASP.NET AJAX assembly DLL has changed to System.Web.Extensions.dll. This
assembly is strong-name signed and is installed in the GAC during installation.
It is no longer necessary or supported to include the assembly in a Web project's
local Bin folder.
* The Microsoft.Web.Extensions namespace has been renamed to System.Web.Extensions.
* The Microsoft.Web.Extensions.Design namespace has been renamed to System.Web.Extensions.Design.
Since day one, Microsoft has been letting us know that when Atlas gets integrated into ASP.NET (.NET Framework 3.5), the namespace would be changed to "System.Web". It has been common practice that only framework classes get the coveted "System" namespace. So why this change, why now!? If you ask me, it makes a ton more sense to make the change now, rather than the end of next year when Orcas ships. There will obviously be some pain points for those of you upgrading applications today, but just imagine how much that would have been magnified if the change was delayed for another year. And who want's to go through upgrade pains and namespace changes less than a year from now?
In short, I think this change is being made very late in the game, which is never comforting - but it's a change for the better. I certainly understand how difficult this decision must have been for Microsoft; strong arguments can be made for either side of this namespace change argument.
So how does this affect Infragistics customers? The effects should be barely noticeable. Our development team has been hard at work making the changes required for the new System.Web.Extensions namespace, even before the ASP.NET AJAX Release Candidate was made available. The bits are going through regression testing right now, and I expect an Infragistics NetAdvantage for ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions Compatibility Release Candidate to be ready in the next 24 hours. Wow, that's a long name. I don't think the marketing team will let me use that product name in any ads - we won't have room for anything else. How bout IG XRC? I like that better.