Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB

Chapter 10. ASP.NET AJAX

Without a doubt, the biggest hype in web development in the past few years is Ajax. Although the technologies that drive Ajax have been around for quite some time, it wasn't until the beginning of 2005 that it got an official name. Ajax, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And Xml, allows your client-side web pages to exchange data with the server through asynchronous calls. Probably the most popular feature driven by Ajax is the flicker-free page that allows you to perform a postback to the server without refreshing the entire page.

To enhance your web site with Ajax features you can choose among different Ajax frameworks. Many of these frameworks offer you a set of features and tools including a client-side JavaScript framework to enable Ajax in the browser, JavaScript code for communication with the server, and server controls to integrate with your ASP.NET pages. Although there are a number of different Ajax frameworks available for ASP.NET, the most obvious one is Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX, as it comes with the .NET 3.5 Framework and Visual Web Developer.

Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX gives you a lot more than flicker-free postbacks alone. In addition to the controls that make flicker-free pages possible, Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX gives you a few more server controls to create rich, interactive, and responsive user interfaces.

In addition to the server control–based part of Ajax, the ASP.NET AJAX Framework also comes with a rich client-side framework. This ...