ASP.NET (www.asp.net)

We all know the importance of working with today’s Web standards like XHTML and CSS—so when it comes time to add dynamic elements to your pages, it makes sense to trust in a server technology that was designed from the ground up to adhere to those standards.

ASP.NET is a server-side scripting language that allows Web pages to be written on a server, which are then delivered to the browser as HTML pages. Each ASP.NET element, known as a control, has been rigorously reviewed and tested against both XHTML and accessibility standards to make sure your designs work across as broad a range of browsers as possible. Each control is created using simple tag-based markup and styled and configured using attributes in the same manner as standard HTML tags. For the fastest and easiest way to create expressive, interactive websites that can deliver high performance, scale, and reliability, you really need look no further than ASP.NET 2.0.

ASP.NET AJAX (ajax.asp.net)

Many of the most popular sites on the Internet today get their edge by from a technology called AJAX. While many developers aspire to design sites with the great user experience that AJAX allows, few have the time to master the complexities of the underlying JavaScript and XML required to achieve these results.

ASP.NET AJAX removes those complexities and unleashes the power of AJAX for designers and developers alike. With ASP.NET AJAX, you can quickly add simple tag-based AJAX controls that just work across browsers and across platforms to your pages. It’s yet another reason why designers today are choosing ASP.NET when it comes to designing dynamic and interactive Web sites.

WPF (wpf.netfx3.com)

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, formerly code-named "Avalon") is the next-generation presentation sub-system for Windows. It provides developers and designers with a unified programming model for building rich Windows smart client user experiences that incorporate UI (User Interface) elements, media, and documents.

With WPF and XAML, you can rapidly design an application’s UI, add interactivity, and mock up data layouts to rapidly and effectively create design prototypes. Incorporate a full spectrum of vectors, bitmaps, 3D content, video, audio, controls, and rich text in a fully three-dimensional environment. Use layered composition, animation, and interactivity to present user interfaces that are more compelling and usable, and that increase comprehension and retention of information by end users. Design application layouts that automatically scale and adaptively lay out content to optimize presentation for various screen resolutions and form factors.

Designing with WPF allows you to differentiate your application design and drive brand recognition and repeat use with custom user interfaces that deliver the optimal customer experience.

XAML

XAML, short for Extensible Application Markup Language, (and pronounced like "camel" with a "z") facilitates collaboration between designers and developers as a declarative markup language that separates the code for the way things look and the way they function. Think of the how you separate your CSS style and layout from the semantic markup of XHTML and you’ve got the right idea.

There’s no more "throwing your design over the wall to the developer." With XAML you go from your fully designed prototype to development without rework or design changes required because of "development scope" or "implementation issues."

"The designer, focused on the look, the behavior, the visualization of data, the usability, and the brand impact, might design something and communicate it to the developer colleague as a piece of paper, or as a JPEG or a TIFF file, or as a movie, some media type that in no way correlates to what a developer would implement. Developers focus on functional capabilities. It yields a result that to the developer might be the same but to the designer is a far cry from what they were after. XAML brings the worlds together." – Forest Key, Director, Web Client UX Platform Marketing