Microsoft AJAX is the new Atlas

It's worth a mention that Atlas is changing it's name and is release date is set to late 2006.

In short the new naming is like this:
"Microsoft AJAX Library" for all Atlas client controls
"ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions" for the asp.net server side Atlas controls
"ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit" for the current Atlas control toolkit

Of course I'm getting all this from the wonderful ScottGu blog article:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/09/11/_2200_Atlas_2200_-1.0-Naming-and-Roadmap.aspx

Why is it that this naming bugs me? Beta technologies always have the cool and unusual names, whereas the final product is usually so plain and boring.

I can only imagine that searches will be slower and more painful with this new naming. Put "Atlas C#" and other terms into a search engine you will get your results pretty easily. Put "Microsoft AJAX C#" or "ASP.NET AJAX C#" and you may be confused with other AJAX libraries or articles about AJAX as a technology etc. So with this naming we'll need rock solid intellisense and documentation otherwise our lives just got harder.

And to those that haven't followed the Atlas project, it would simply sound like Microsoft found that AJAX was taking off and quickly tacked a library together and and said "Hey, now we have AJAX... see Microsoft AJAX." The truth is the project has been very well thought out. A free client side library, a free asp.net library and a free community built toolkit. It sounds far too open source and cool to be Microsoft. At least too cool to be "Microsoft AJAX"! I see it as one of those projects, along with the wonderful express products, that really reflects Microsofts future potential as a helping hand to programmers, not an evil dictatorship set to make everyone learn the hard way to code with the highest money outlay.

Oh well, it's only a name in the end, the technology is still cool and I'd still tip it to be the number 1 AJAX library for .net shortly after it's release. Lets hope Scott and the others keep pushing the technology to great heights.