As we approach the long-awaited RTM (or RTW – Release to Web) of ASP.NET AJAX (formerly “Atlas”), here’s a brief history of the project:

June 2005 – Development on what would become “Atlas” begins. Most of the ASP.NET team is focused on delivering ASP.NET 2.0 and VS 2005, however, so the initial team is pretty small.

October 2005 – First Atlas Community Tech Preview (CTP) is released.

November 2005 – VS2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 ship. More Microsoft team resources available for “Atlas” work.

December 2005 – The UpdatePanel, probably the most important control in ASP.NET AJAX apart from the ScriptManager, debuts in a CTP.

March 2006 – “Go Live” License made available for “Atlas” – many sites begin using the still-CTP bits for live applications.

July 2006 – The last public CTP is made available.

October 2006 – The first beta.

November 2006 – Beta 2.

December 2006 – Release Candidate

January 2007 – 1.0 Release (hopefully!)

As you can see, it’s been about 18 months since the project began. It’s gone through a number of pretty major changes in that time, and even with its final release it will include a Futures CTP what will allow it to continue to evolve much faster than the ASP.NET point release schedule would allow for. I have several applications that are awaiting the official release (and subsequent support on web hosts) to go live with the 1.0 feature set, and like many other ASP.NET developers, I’m very eager and excited that the 1.0 release is almost here.