Programming ASP.NET AJAX

Chapter 10. Using the Control Toolkit

Some critics of ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX say it is nothing more than the UpdatePanel control plus a couple of JavaScript APIs. Indeed, in order to keep the size of the ASP.NET AJAX library as small as possible (to make it more acceptable for use by large sites), functionality that existed in Atlas (the pre-release version of ASP.NET AJAX) was stripped out of the release version. Of course, not all of it was stripped, so ASP.NET AJAX alone is still an excellent choice.

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit was created to allow both Microsoft and the ASP.NET community to easily add noncore functionality to the framework, independent of the ASP.NET AJAX update cycle and outside of official Microsoft support. The software, including source code, has been released under a shared source license (the Microsoft Permissive License, also known as MS-PL). Microsoft has also created a site where company developers and community members can add new functionality. (See the section "For Further Reading" at the end of this chapter.)

This chapter shows how to install and use the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, and it introduces you to some of the more useful controls the toolkit contains. However, because the toolkit continues to evolve with new controls and functionality being added on a monthly basis, the information here can change quite quickly. You should always check the ASP.NET AJAX Controls Toolkit site for the latest updates and information (See the section "For Further ...