Asynchronous Postback in Web Applications

So a while back I read an an article about the Client Callback Feature in ASP.NET 2.0, which allows ASP.NET 2.0 to do updates to a page without a full page rountrip to the server. But wouldn't you know it, it was specific to Internet Explorer. The article ended on a hopeful note with:

Please note that not every browser supports client callbacks, so two new boolean properties named SupportsCallback and SupportsXmlHttp were added to the Request.Browser object. Currently, both properties will return the same value, but the two properties were created because client callbacks might be implemented using a different technique other than the XMLHTTP ActiveX object in the future.

2.0 is still not out, but cross-browser support using XMLHttpRequest is certainly possible to anyone wanting to roll their own code. A very nice example of this can be found here.

ASP.NET 2.0 isn't out yet. So i figured, i might as well see if the stance for Client Callbacks and cross-browser support has changed since that first article. Info was only vague, but i think the answer is indeed maybe? -- at least if this blog post is favorably interpreted... Although this blog did not interpret it as such...

If it's not in there, I'm sure going to find out how hard it would be to subclass the appropriate classes to create a W3C XMLHttpRequest capable version