What is the SUPPORTED way of consuming web service from client side?

[Ryan Jacops]

I am looking for a way to consume a web service from the
client side w/o refreshing the page. I have already read
the article "Remote Scripting in a .NET World" (see ref.
below). Unfortunately, the examples in this article use
the webservice.htc, which is unsupported by Microsoft (see
other ref. below). I have found that there is a good
reason it is unsupported, because from my experience (and
others I've read about), this component has memory leak
issues.

So my question remains: What is the SUPPORTED/bug-free
way of consuming web service from client side?

For many years, I've used XMLHTTP in similar applications
to connect to the server from client side w/o refreshing
the page. Is this still the best way to go? I guess I
figured that there must be something newer and better
in .NET.

REFERENCES
"Remote Scripting in a .NET World"
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?
url=/library/en-us/dnclinic/html/scripting11122001.asp

Microsoft's Unsupported Warning
http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/samples/internet/defaul
t.asp?
url=/downloads/samples/internet/behaviors/library/webservic
e/default.asp


Thanks,
Ryan