[dsego]

I remember that you could build components (controls) in in a visual editor and wire up events with your code written in C# or whatever. Some controls came with baked in JS, like accordions and such. You could also wrap a part of your page in a ajax wrapper, and it wouldn't reload the whole page. The framework would generate all the glue code to send the POST requests etc, essentially abstracting the HTTP layer altogether. It would even keep local state in a hidden input field between re-renders.