Microsoft's tools for building rich Internet applications (RIAs)-ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight 2-promise to help take the "developer ugly" out of line-of-business software.

Several sessions at last month's technology conference VSLive! New York addressed how to take advantage of AJAX and Silverlight in the same app. In his "LOB 2.0 with Silverlight and AJAX" presentation, Infragistics Inc.'s Technical Evangelist Tony Lombardo acknowledged that line-of-business (LOB) apps traditionally have stressed function over form. Microsoft's advances in its Web technologies are enabling developers to move from HTML and ASP.NET's linked Web pages with Postbacks to HTML and ASP.NET AJAX-enabled "applications," and now AJAX and Silverlight animations that increase usability and appeal, he said.

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