this print for content only—size & color not accurate spine = 0.675 " 288 page count Books for professionals By professionals ® Foundations of ASP.NET AJAX Dear Reader, The web has evolved quite a bit from the days of large text and big blue links over gray backgrounds 10 years ago, and most users have come to expect a richer and more responsive user interface. Interestingly enough, the technol- ogy pillars of what we know today as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) were already in place at that time. It wasn’t until the advent of a few mainstream applications, such as Google Maps, that people started to realize the potential of these AJAX apps. In recent years, there has been a huge rise in the popularity and demand for AJAX and as such, a number of frameworks have been intro- duced to the marketplace to ease the traditionally difficult development effort associated with creating AJAX apps. Microsoft, for its part, introduced the ASP.NET AJAX framework, which is a comprehensive package of technologies addressing both client-side and serv- er-side development in addition to a suite of user interface controls (the AJAX Control Toolkit). This brought major productivity gains to AJAX development in the ASP.NET world. Its broad spectrum of features and controls, wide commu- nity support, and tight integration with Visual Studio has made ASP.NET AJAX an excellent choice for implementing AJAX applications within ASP.NET and even more so for enhancing existing ASP.NET applications. This book is a primer to this technology. It introduces you to ASP.NET AJAX, explores its main features and controls, and walks you through how to build AJAX applications quickly and easily through a series of practical examples that demonstrate the most powerful features of the technology. If you are just start- ing out in the world of ASP.NET AJAX, this is the book you need. Robin Pars Author of ASP.NET Intranets US $39.99 Shelve in .NET User level: Beginner–Intermediate Pars, Moroney, Grieb Foundations of ASP.NET AJAX The eXperT’s Voice ® in .neT Foundations of ASP.NET AJAX cyan MaGenTa yelloW Black panTone 123 c Robin Pars, Laurence Moroney, and John Grieb Companion eBook Available THE APRESS ROADMAP Pro AJAX and the .NET 2.0 Platform Pro ASP.NET 2.0 in C# or VB Foundations of ASP.NET AJAX Foundations of Ajax Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in C# or VB www.apress.com SOURCE CODE ONLINE Companion eBook See last page for details on $10 eBook version ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-828-3 ISBN-10: 1-59059-828-8 9 781590 598283 5 3 9 9 9 Build AJAX Applications in ASP.NET [...]... you will also need the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions and the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit, which can be downloaded from http:/ /ajax .asp.net 828-8 CH 01. qxd 8/30/07 7:24 PM CHAPTER Page 1 1 Introducing AJAX W elcome to Foundations of ASP NET AJAX This book is intended to get you up and running with the new framework from Microsoft that allows you to build Web 2.0 applications that implement AJAX functionality If you’ve... and Timer Controls 10 9 Using a Task List Manager 11 5 Summary 12 9 ■ CHAPTER 7 Using the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (Part 1) 13 1 Installing the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit 13 1 The Accordion and AccordionPane Controls 13 3 AlwaysVisibleControlExtender... working with ASP.NET After a long beta period, in early 2007, Microsoft officially released the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions, which include a set of client- and server-side controls and functionality leveraging some of the existing technologies in ASP.NET This release also included the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit, which contains a set of control extenders that offer enhanced UI effects and built-in AJAX capabilities... 257 xi 828-8 FM.qxd 10 /15 /07 6:02 AM Page xii 828-8 FM.qxd 10 /15 /07 6:02 AM Page xiii About the Authors ■ROBIN PARS has more than 12 years of IT development experience as a developer and architect He has been working with ASP.NET since the initial release of the ASP+ runtime in the summer of 2000 Robin holds a B.Sc degree in Computer Science from the University of California along with nearly... 10 2 Using the UpdateProgress Control 10 2 Programming with the UpdateProgress Control 10 3 Introducing the Timer Control 10 5 Using the Timer Control 10 6 Summary 10 8 ■ CHAPTER 6 Using Server Controls in ASP.NET AJAX 10 9... 14 9 CollapsiblePanelExtender Control 15 4 ConfirmButtonExtender Control 15 7 DragPanelExtender Control 15 9 DropDownExtender Control 16 1 Summary 16 3 ix 828-8 FM.qxd x 10 /15 /07 6:02 AM Page... CHAPTER 8 Using the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (Part 2) 16 5 DropShadow and RoundedCorners Extenders 16 5 DropShadow Extender 16 5 RoundedCorners Extender 16 7 DynamicPopulate Extender 16 8 FilteredTextBox Extender 17 1 HoverMenu Extender... both types of applications, the result was that the user experience would be similar across both (see Figure 1- 3) Coupled with the emergence of Extensible Markup Language (XML), a language similar to HTML but specialized for handling data instead of presentation, web application development was finally coming of age 5 828-8 CH 01. qxd 6 8/30/07 7:24 PM Page 6 CHAPTER 1 ■ INTRODUCING AJAX Figure 1- 3 The... and built-in AJAX capabilities that can be used on a page with very little development effort With this release, Microsoft brought about major productivity leaps to AJAX development in the world of ASP.NET With ASP.NET AJAX, you can easily convert your existing ASP.NET applications to AJAX applications, and you can add sophisticated user interface elements such as drag and drop, networking, and browser... sophisticated as those used in standard ASP.NET development As such, it had been difficult and time-consuming to develop, debug, and maintain AJAX applications despite their innate user friendliness However, as the popularity and use of AJAX web applications rose, so did a number of frameworks designed to ease AJAX development by providing more out -of- the-box functionality A few of those packages had been somewhat . eBook Available THE APRESS ROADMAP Pro AJAX and the .NET 2.0 Platform Pro ASP. NET 2.0 in C# or VB Foundations of ASP. NET AJAX Foundations of Ajax Beginning ASP. NET 2.0 in C# or VB www.apress.com SOURCE CODE ONLINE Companion. Grieb Foundations of ASP. NET AJAX 828-8 FM.qxd 10 /15 /07 6:02 AM Page i Foundations of ASP. NET AJAX Copyright © 2007 by Robin Pars, Laurence Moroney, and John Grieb All rights reserved. No part of. in ASP. NET AJAX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 9 ■CHAPTER 7 Using the ASP. NET AJAX Control Toolkit (Part 1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 1 ■CHAPTER 8 Using the ASP. NET AJAX