I'm definetly not the only one blogging this news, but ASP.NET AJAX beta 2 has just been released. This would probably mean that we are not far from a final release. This version is said to be feature complete although there already is a CTP version available with some parts that are being worked on. (I'll probably get back with info on what.) My tip of the hand is 2-3 months.

I've just dowloaded the beta 2 and I haven't yet dug into it to see what changes there are since last CTP. But there is one thing I'd like to reflect upon already now.  When installing the beta 2,  it actually states ASP.NET AJAX extention. So we see that the ASP.NET AJAX will be completly integrated with the regular .NET Framework. My bet is that with time,  ASP.NET AJAX will be a natural part of ASP.NET. Also seing in the release notes, that the <atlas: prefix for web controls is changed to the regular <asp: prefix. Nice.

Oh well. Time to get my hands dirty.

Almost forgot. The .NET Framework 3.0 has just been relased too. But I'll refer to a collegue of mine for this news.