Development of Atlas has met some roadblocks. An Update Panel feature for page refreshes was beset with reliability problems, according to a presentation (http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/06/14/79289_HNatlastalk_1.html) at the Microsoft TechEd 2006 conference in Boston in June. The company also has had to address questions on which browsers to support. Microsoft nonetheless has had tremendous interest in Atlas, Microsoft's Scott Guthrie, a general manager in the Microsoft Developer Division, wrote in his blog (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/) on Monday.

"We've had an unbelievable amount of interest and excitement around the product, with more than 250,000 downloads this year alone," Guthrie said.

"I am excited to announce today that we are going to ship this fully supported Atlas 1.0 release on top of ASP.Net 2.0 and ensure that it works with Visual Studio 2005," Guthrie said.

To expedite Atlas, the company will focus on a core set of supported functionality, including common components needed to enable developers to build client-side controls/components. Server-side functionality for integrating with ASP.Net also has been deemed core to the platform. Other features will be available in a separate download but not offered in the core "bucket," Guthrie said.

"Over time, we will be moving more and more features into the fully supported bucket," Guthrie said. The 1.0 Atlas technology will be cross-browser and cross-platform, he added.