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Breaking changes were all in the transition from July CTP to Beta 1. Now the just released ASP.NET AJAX Extensions Beta 2 proceeds on the same path delineated with Beta 1 and is pretty easy to work with.
All the information in the release notes was enough to adapt Beta 1 code to the new build. No worries; everything's smooth and seamless.
The significant news is that Beta 2 is virtually feature-complete. I don't know when it is going to ship as a v1.0 product, but what's in at this time is really close to the final shape.
Summarizing, ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0 will feature:
Partial rendering through UpdatePanel control and friends (including UpdateProgress, triggers, and Timer).
You can now link a progress template to a given update panel and client-side events are fired to the page during the set up of the panel refresh. This feature is invaluable as it makes possible for you to adjust the UI (i.e., disabling/enabling/graying controls) before, during, and after the refresh
Web service client calls
You can invoke ASMX local Web services. Bridge files and cross-domain services will be back in future post v1.0 builds although they'll take a significantly different form and syntax. For now, if you want to call a remote Web service (say, Amazon) you have to do that the old way using a server-generated proxy class or, in case of plain-old XML interfaces, also the WebRequest managed class would work. Page methods are to be static which mostly means that you can't access page controls. To me, it's not a big deal.
Extenders
Although the AJAX Control Toolkit is still a separate entity and download, base classes for building extenders are in v1.0. This means that you can safely create your own custom extenders and/or import extenders from the Toolkit. But, again, the toolkit is a separate assembly. And--to the level of knowledge I have at this time--I invite you to be careful with extenders in the toolkit. At least months ago, in July CTP build, I had troubles with the most complex of them and could hardly have them work outside of the provided samples.
Sorry for being repetitive writing more or less the same ideas over and over again. I'm just trying to clear my mind and clarify things before starting on a new book v1.0 book project.
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I'm getting ready to meet the 5,000 of you attending DevConnections next week. WOOOOOOW
In spite of what I did for the largest part of the past months, I won't be presenting about ASP.NET AJAX at the show. And given the breaking changes with Beta 1, that is a big relief for me :-)
Instead, I'll be presenting about patterns for an effective, professional and extensible middle-tier focusing on ASP.NET presentation layers and w/o SQL Server. In particular, I invite you to take a look at the following CodePlex project: Northwind Starter Kit.
It shows a DAL based on industry standard enterprise design patterns and the Northwind database. Inside of the download, you also find a sample presentation layer for WinForms and WPF using the Model-View-Presenter approach. Something that ASP.NET developers should start getting familiar with as soon as possible.
At DevConnections, I'll also have a half-day seminar the Monday (November 6) on rich custom ASP.NET controls developed without ASP.NET AJAX. Benign script injection, hidden fields, and little known server-side control interfaces are the bread and butter of the session. Come and see.
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I spent the past ten days working on Beta 1 of ASP.NET AJAX Extensions. (OK, I also played a bit of tennis but that's another--and sad--story ...)
I'm just curious to see what's coming out with Beta 2 of ASP.NET AJAX Extensions.
I'll nimbly bypass the side effects of the breaking changes and cuts in Beta 1 vs. July CTP. Today, I can say that most of the troubles and frustration I encountered along the way was due to lack of knowledge and understanding of the new behavior of old things. Actually, porting old code to Beta 1, aside from dropped features, was a matter of a few hours. The Beta 1 is not more bugged or unstable than any other Beta version. Quality is certainly not the point here. And this is different from what I posted earlier.
My Atlas book is stillborn and was pulped as an old book right off the press without even seeing the shape of a bookshelf. I'll work on a new version starting next week.
So my position regarding Beta 1 is somehow changed after a few days of work with it. In addition to lack of knowledge, objectively certain features have been implemented according to a philosophy different from the one that seemed emerge out of previous CTPs. I complained about the product being unstable; I have to admit that there was much of personal disappointment with that as well as a lot of frustration for undocumented features.
One good thing about Beta 1 and successive
The framework contains EXACTLY what people need at this time and stage. Updatable panels easy, really easy to integrate with existing applications. The possibility of making remote procedure calls, though with some care. These features work great.
One bad thing about Beta 1 (but not necessarily successive builds)
The return of JavaScript and the elimination of neat programming features (from ErrorTemplate to just a bit of XML Script). It seems to me (repeat, me) that the team opted for the solution that required less coding on their own or, maybe more likely, for the solution that can give the maximum of flexibility to developers. Either way, there's the bold return of JavaScript. Not necessarily a bad thing.
To continue in another post ...