September Atlas Control Toolkit Released (Now with Animation Support)

The latest refresh of the Atlas Control Toolkit, which is a great library of useful ASP.NET AJAX-enabled controls built on top of the core ASP.NET AJAX runtime, was posted late last week.  You can run samples online as well as download it here.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, what is cool about the Toolkit is that it includes several controls contributed by non-Microsoft developers.  For example, new in this release is a cool new "Slider" control (click here to see a demo of it in action) that was contributed and which enables smooth client-side range-picking support:

Also included with this release of the Toolkit is some of the new client-side animation support that is starting to come online.  The animation package can be used both directly from JavaScript, or via a new <atlasToolkit:AnimationExtender> control that you can use to easily compose animation behaviors (for example: you could have text or an image fade in, expand, explode, move, pop-up, etc) in response to user action. 

What is cool about the Animation package is that you can optionally define animation behaviors declaratively using the <atlas:AnimationExtender> control, which makes defining animation sequences clean and easy. 

You can learn more about the new Animation package as well as run the demos online here.  Also make sure to check out the Animation Reference Page to learn more about the Animation class framework and all of the methods, properties, and events it supports. 

In addition to firing animations in response to user clicks or client-side behavior, you can also use the new <AtlasToolkit:UpdatePanelAnimationExtender> to add animation support in response to post-backs that use the new ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel control to refresh portions of a page.  This can make highlighting or indicating changed UI cleaner and more user friendly (for example: you could gently fade in changes - or get really fancy and rotate/color-code them if you want to make your users dizzy).  Check out this online demo of the UpdatePanelAnimationExtender to learn more on this control.  Alan Le also posted a nice simple sample showing how you can declaratively compose animations using it here that you should check out as well.

As always, you can download the Atlas Control Toolkit for free (with complete source) and run it online here.  To learn more about using both ASP.NET AJAX (aka Atlas) as well as the Control Toolkit, also check out this blog post I did a few weeks ago linking to a bunch of great free videos you can watch.

Hope this helps,

Scott

 

25 Comments

  • Sorry if I missed it, but is there anything that tells us how to upgrade from the previous version? Thanks.

  • I like the AJAX - color animation thingie. I've always wanted to mix what Wordpress does with AJAX. A good way to draw attention to a changed area.

  • Hooray - is back - nuskool ;-)

  • I love the UpdatePanelAnimationExtender. I was just getting to the point of removing my UpdatePanels. &nbsp;Users didn&#39;t notice that the contents had refreshed and so complained that the buttons weren&#39;t working. &nbsp;With the animation the updates are more obvious.

  • Anything left in script.aculo.us to incorporate?

  • Hi Joe,

    I believe the animation package in the Atlas Control Toolkit is now more powerful than the script.aculo.us one. The Atlas Control Toolkit doesn't yet have really good drag/drop support yet - although that isn't too far away. At that point it should be a superset (plus a lot more) of everything in that library.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Mr. Scott,

    Any plan to integrate XForm platform with ASP.Net in future. Please reply.

  • Is upgrading from a previous release as simple as replacing the directory where I originally upzipped the controls?

  • Is upgrading as simple as replacing the directory where you unpacked the toolkit previously?

  • Any chance at more examples for the animation extender and/or examples using code behind to add/configure them? I downloaded the toolkit, been playing around with it, but I bet there's a lot of things I'm missing.

  • Hi JR,

    We'll be posting more and more videos on Atlas on the ASP.NET Learn Center: http://www.asp.net/learn

    We are also working on a big Atlas tutorial series that will help.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Shane,

    Yep -- to install it you should be able to just replace the assemblies and be good to go.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Vishant,

    Atlas runs in two modes: debug and release. When in debug mode the javascript download size is indeed large (~250kb). In release mode the current CTP is much smaller (~48kb), and it is cached foreever.

    The final Atlas release mode size will be about 10kb for the core system (we are doing some extra factoring and crunching work).

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • It would be great to have a simple example of using the new AnimationExtender to create a continuous slide show with fade in / fade out effects.

  • When i loaded the Sept. release of Atlas Controls toolkit and put the controls into VS2005, i got the accordian control, but not the accordian pane or extender. Did i do something wrong?

    Randy

  • Hi Randy,

    Any chance you could post the accordian scenario here: http://forums.asp.net/1022/ShowForum.aspx The Atlas Control toolkit team actively monitors this forum and should be able to help.

    thx!

    Scott

  • Hi Scott,

    Thanks for your answer. Very happy to know that in release mode ATLAS generates small script file.

    You have mentioned - "...it is cached foreever". What does it mean? I am assuming that when user clears browser cache, all client side files will be deleted.

    What happens when I have two different ATLAS controls on two different pages? In this case, will it use same client side .AXD file created by previous page?

    What happens when user close the browse and visit same site in new browser window?

    I am asking many questions but answers of these question will help me to convince my client to use ATLAS.

    Thanks for your answers, as always!

    Vishant

  • Hi Vishant,

    By cache forever I meant that the browser is basically told to cache the script for a long time (years I think). If the user explictly clears their cache, then it will be gone - but by default if they close their browser and reopen it will still be cached.

    The Atlas .js file is only downloaded once for the application. If you have multiple pages they will share the same .js instance.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Scott,

    Finally I got some free time to look at ATLAS or should I say no ASP.NET AJAX and your video was quite good to look at and gave me a quick understanding and now I am going through all videos and I've noticed that there are some "How do I?" good videos but I think that it would be quite useful to see all videos of the ASP.NET AJAX control kit. I was looking for the animation one because that seems to be quite an interesting control but no video to show all the features and possible cool demos of the animation control. Are you going to release soon the videos for all controls in the Control toolkit?

    Thanks

  • Hi Fernando,

    Yep -- we'll continue to be releasing new videos about the controls in the toolkit (along with samples for each). There are so many new ones coming out that it has been hard to keep up! But we are get there. :-)

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Eric,

    Any chance you could post this question in this forum: http://forums.asp.net/1022/ShowForum.aspx

    The folks who built the toolkit hang out there and will be able to help answer your question.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Scott, thanks a lot for your work

    I was trying with the accordion control, and I had problems with it when I set the AutoSize property without setting the Height property. The application crash.

    Thanks.

    Luis

  • Hi Luis,

    Any chance you could post this question in this forum: http://forums.asp.net/1022/ShowForum.aspx

    The folks who built the toolkit hang out there and will be able to help answer your question.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • how i can run OnUpdated only for 1 UpdatePanel.
    because it run every time one of all UpdatePanels was updated:((

  • Hi Psy,

    With the Beta1 and Beta2 releases of ASP.NET AJAX, client-side javascript events are now exposed that allow you to determine and control which updatepanel fires.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

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