Update: I decided to upload a screencast of Atlas I was saving for a presentation. There is no sound so hopefully you get a ok picture of the process it takes to complete the HelloWorld of Atlas using the Atlas Client Script Framework.

You can download the screencast here and the Atlas source code here. If you have any questions about either feel free to post in the comments or email me.

On the weekend I messed around with Atlas. Here is what I have learned so far.

1 - Debugging with Atlas is hard. I was trying out one of the hands-on labs from the PDC and there was a case error in the lab. The problem is that even though there is an error, the code still compiles and the page still appears as normal. You don't find out you have an error until you click a button and nothing happens. I checked out Nikhil Kothari's blog and his presentation from the PDC where he demos a work in progress WebDevHelper which is all i've found that can help debug Atlas.

From the WebDevHelper project page:

"ASP.NET Development Helper is a utility for ASP.NET page and control developers that plugs into Internet Explorer. It allows viewing information about the current page such as view state and trace, perform some operations on the server in the context of the running application to aid testing, and also allows monitoring requests and responses for diagnostic scenarios."

2 - There are 2 different ways to use Atlas. You can use the client side framework and the server side controls. The client script framework will work on all modern browsers and Microsoft has done great work making sure it is compatible on all the browsers.

3 - You better get used to typing WebMethod if you want to use Atlas.

4 - Atlas adds type system extensions to Javascript to enable the usage of namespaces, inheritance, and interfaces. Woohoo!