ASP.NET AJAX / Microsoft AJAX is dead?

While reading the book “Programming Microsoft ASP.NET MVC by Dino Esposito (May 14, 2010)”, I learned client side data binding.

The technology mentioned in the book is Microsoft Ajax / ASP.NET Ajax and the Sys.UI.DataView component. I want to try it out myself, but i can barely find any documentation online, not to mention any official.

After google for “Is asp.net ajax dead?”, I find lots of blog posts to indicate that Jquery is the first choice right now.

If anyone is interested in the original posts, below is the link.

http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2010/03/16/microsoft-jquery-and-templating.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/toddanglin/archive/2010/04/19/microsoft-ajax-client-library-is-dead-long-live-jquery.aspx

http://jclaes.blogspot.com/2010/04/state-of-client-side-aspnet-ajax-40.html

http://encosia.com/understanding-jquerys-impact-on-microsoft-and-asp-net/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4250637/is-the-asp-net-ajax-library-dead