Professional ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX

Chapter 7. The ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit

With the installation of the .NET Framework 3.5 and through using Visual Studio 2008, you will find a few controls available that allow you to build ASP.NET applications with AJAX capabilities. The .NET Framework 3.5 is the framework that takes your applications to the next level. There is so much that you can accomplish with this framework, including adding specific AJAX capabilities to your user and custom server controls. Every little tweak you make to your application in adding AJAX enhancements will make your application seem more fluid and responsive to the end user.

You might be wondering where the big new AJAX-enabled server controls are for this edition of Visual Studio 2008 if this is indeed a new world for building controls. The reason you do not see a new section of AJAX server controls is that Microsoft's work in this space has been treated as an open-source project instead of just blending it into Visual Studio 2008 as a whole.

Developers at Microsoft and in the community have been working on a series of AJAX-capable server controls that you can use in your ASP.NET applications. These controls are collectively called the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. If you go to www.asp.net/ajax, you will find a link to the Control Toolkit for downloading. When you choose to download the Control Toolkit, you are directed to the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit's page on CodePlex at www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=16488. This ...