Announcing Volta: Web Development Using Only the Materials in the Room
Just released from Microsoft Live Labs: Volta.
Volta is another codename project from Microsoft that aims at Web UI experience.
The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.
With Volta, developers can use C#, Visual Basic, IronPython, or other .Net languages that utilize .Net libraries and tools. But taking advantage of Volta requires the newly released Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 toolset because Volta will not work with the earlier Visual Studio 2005 release.
Developers prototype the application first as an entirely client application and then use a method called declarative tier-splitting, which allows developers to specify which parts of a program run on the server tier and which parts run on the client tier with a simple, declarative markup.
Afterward, the compiler takes care of the client code, server code, and boilerplate code that ties the two tiers, handling such functions as communication, serialization, and security.
See detailed architectural and fundamental description here.