Should i go with Asp.net Ajax 4.0 client templating?

Question

I have been investing sometime in client templating in Ajax 4.0. However now i seem to have some doubt if the choice is right. I hear that Microsoft is investing heavily in jquery templating jquery.tmpl plugin and in general for client side Ajax JQuery seem to be what is recommended. However jquery.tmpl is in early stages for me to consider for any serious purposes. Or should i just fall back to the usual Asp.net Server-side stuff. Any pointers please? I am at a stage where i can revert back without loss

Answer 1

I don't think you will be totally screwed if you adopt a bleeding edge technology like the jQuery.tmpl

Your level of risk is up to you though. Early adoption now vs. Some rework later. Obviously this is eventually going to be where everything goes so you may want to just bite the bullet and start now. Pure "Server-side stuff" as you mentioned does not help you to build the infrastructure you will need to later move to client side templating. It is a totally different paradigm, so start thinking about it now.

That being said, I have personally used John Resig's client side templating engine and it works really well. Rick Strahl has a nice post on different approaches.