I was little crazy to test drive Atlas ever since its release by Microsoft. I had found that even though there are many resources on the web such as tutorials, articles, videos, they do not provide clear cut coverage about all the features of Atlas. Moreover, books are very limited in this area and many of the available books contain information which is not required. Programming Atlas by Christian Wenz provides comprehensive coverage on the various aspects of Atlas in an elegant manner.

The first chapter provides a basic overview about Atlas and Ajax with the help of an example. The second chapter examines the fundamentals of JavaScript. The third chapter deeply analyzes the usage of XMLHttpRequest and XMLDocument objects with a short coverage about JSON. The next four chapters provide a brief outlook about the various Atlas controls, Data Binding and Validation, Usage of Behaviors, Components and Animations. The author demonstrates how to create a fade effect with the help of complete source code and analysis.

The author explores the concepts of client script library and the creation of custom data sources in chapters 8 and 9. Chapter 10 discusses the application of web services in Atlas with the help of an error handling example in addition to coverage about maintaining session state and consumption of external web services. The author provides tips for extending controls such as the addition of AutoComplete feature in chapter 11. Virtual Earth is becoming more popular nowadays and if you would like to explore its usage in Atlas, then you should go through Chapter 12 as it provides a comprehensive coverage about the topic. From my point of view, this chapter will be very useful for hard core developers.

Each chapter contains plenty of source codes accompanied with screenshots with detailed explanations about each concept. The author has mentioned some of the important features in boxes and also provides a list of useful links to important websites at the end of each chapter. This will surely help a reader to learn more about the discussed topic. The source codes can be downloaded from the website of the publisher.

The remaining chapters examine the usage of Web Parts and the installation and usage of Atlas control Toolkit. Although the book examines the coverage of Atlas using ASP.NET, the author also provides a short coverage about the usage of Atlas using PHP. The final chapter discusses some of the Ajax tools such as client callbacks, Ajax.NET and consumption of web services using JavaScript. The book also contains four appendixes which provide information about XMLHttpRequest, DOM, Atlas, Script Manager and UpdatePanel declaratives.

I very much liked the approach followed by the author to discuss various concepts in a simple manner. I would suggest that the author create a separate website for the purpose of the book and provide updates since the content is subject to change. I must say that Programming Atlas is a real definitive guide for developers who wish to master the next generation web development technology.