Programming ASP.NET 3.5, 4th Edition

Web Forms: Plain or AJAX?

You may notice as you add new items to your website that the Add New Item dialog box offers two kinds of basic page—a web form and an AJAX web form—and the same option for a master page (see Figure 4-2). The AJAX web form item is simply a plain web form with references to the ASP.NET AJAX libraries included already, so you can use AJAX controls right away. The same is true of the difference between Master Page and AJAX Master Page in the figure.

Figure 4-2. Web form or AJAX web form?

To convert a plain web form to support AJAX, add a reference to System.Web.Extensions.dll in the project references and a ScriptManager control to the form.

For the remainder of this chapter, we’re going to discuss the various controls available to you. We’ll explain how to use each one, give you examples to work with, and then see how the AJAX Toolkit controls can extend their functionality.