Community Blogs

I'm speaking this week at TechEd New Zealand, and TechEd Australia. As part of my talk, I show how Microsoft AJAX offers object oriented LIKE behavior. There are a ton of examples that I have build over the years on this subject, and the entire project is hosted on CodePlex.com/ScottCateAjax SideLine: This demo is included in the CodePlex sample as Demo 6F and 6G It's always funny how the most popular part of a session can not be predicted. After hours and hours (days and months) of code that I've written and show, the most popular feedback that I've received on my talk was showing Sys.StringBuilder and prototyping it with an appendFormat method. So it's worthy of a blog post. Sys.StringBuilder.prototype.appendFormat = Sys...

In part 1 , we saw how to use DataView to render JavaScript data using a simple template. In this post, we'll see how rich bindings unlock richer scenarios where user changes automatically propagate back to the data and to all UI that is bound to it. In part 1 , we used the simplest type of binding, one-way, one-time bindings. These bindings are created using the {{ expression }} syntax, which is both simple and rich in that it enables arbitrary JavaScript expressions. This is made possible by the fact that templates are compiled by the Ajax framework into a JavaScript function and these bindings get embedded right into that generated function. Because of that, the binding gets evaluated only once, when the template is instantiated. For...

Stephen Walther has a pretty cool post on using the new file-only version of the Ajax Control Toolkit from an MVC application: http://weblogs.asp.net/stephenwalther/archive/2008/08/22/asp-net-mvc-tip-36-create-a-popup-calendar-helper.aspx Read More...

I just released the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 SP1. This is an intermediary release that provides a version of the Toolkit that is built against the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. It contains a new control, MultiHandleSlider, built by Daniel Crenna (thanks, Daniel, you're the hero of this release) and integrates patches contributed by the community. A big thank you to all who contributed (see their names in the hall of fame ). The sample web site is not yet updated to this new release, this will be done in a couple of days. I will update this post once this is done. What's next? In the very short term, we will provide a client-side only version of the toolkit, similar to the Microsoft Ajax Library , that enables...

A client grid control is probably the most requested control for the Ajax Control Toolkit . It will come eventually but if you need a simple grid control right now, DotNetSlackers' Ajax Data Controls do a pretty good job. Their grid supports pagination , sorting , drag and drop of columns , in-place edition and is server-integrated. They also provide repeater types of controls but those are made a little more complex to use because of the lack of data binding. The whole thing is open-source . w00t! Check it out: http://dotnetslackers.com/projects/AjaxDataControls/GridView/Default.aspx Read More...

Last week, we shipped the first preview for the Ajax work we're doing in ASP.NET 4.0 under the simple form of a simple script file (release and debug versions). This should show how much emphasis this release puts on the client-side. As a matter of facts, I'll use a plain HTML file here instead of an ASPX file to make it perfectly clear that everything here (except for the web service that provides the data) runs on the client. One of the scenarios we're trying to improve is updating parts of the page with new data without a postback (in other words, Ajax). That's a scenario you could implement in a number of manners. First, you could put an UpdatePanel control around your server rendering of the data and be done with it. That...

I'm very happy to announce that the first preview for the new Ajax features in ASP.NET just went live. Thanks to everyone who made that happen and thanks to all of you for providing feedback on the Roadmap . This preview contains preview implementations for the following features: Client-side template rendering Declarative instantiation of behaviors and controls DataView control Markup extensions Bindings I'll go over those features in more details and provide walkthroughs in the following weeks. As usual, all feedback is very welcome. http://www.codeplex.com/aspnet/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=15511 Read More...

ScriptManager is a useful control. It manages script references, removes duplicates, enables localization and debug/release modes, enables script combining and makes client-side component-based development easier (components register their script dependencies with ScriptManager without the page developer having to know those dependencies). But one thing we should have anticipated was that this control would be interesting to developers who wish to use a different framework than the Microsoft Ajax Library . Currently, ScriptManager isn't really usable without Microsoft Ajax because it includes the Microsoft library (without a simple way to disable it) and outputs some startup script to the page. We're looking at correcting that in future...

We just published our roadmap for ASP.NET Ajax . In this document we describe some of the proposed features that we are considering investing in future releases of ASP.NET AJAX, Visual Web Developer, and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. We really appreciate your feedback, so this document is intended as much for you to provide an input to our direction as well as to give some indication of what the teams are investing in. http://www.codeplex.com/aspnet/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=14924 Read More...

I was going thru some pages for my current project today when I ran into the said error " Sys.ArgumentException: Value must not be null for Controls and Behaviors ". It was the first time I've encountered it and since it was working the last time I browsed it I didn't have a clue what was causing it so had to dig around. [more] I have tested the page though I have to admit that not thoroughly (yeah I know, don't check in not well tested code) and there was no automated UI tests for it, took me sometime to stop the cause. I had to consider what applications I installed on my machine recently or other changes. After some digging it turns out that it is related to a modalPopupExtender (part of AJAXControlToolkit ) in the page...