ASP.NET Popup Calendar / Wizard Recommendations?

Any recommendations on a calendar popup server control? I'd like something along the lines of the ones on the front page of Expedia. I'd looked at Peter Blum's Date Package, but it breaks Rob McLaws' 8th Rule - Must Be Self Contained. I've been using a simple Javascript solution like these, but they don't fit in well with the .NET paradigm. Perhaps if we could get Andy down to 9 hours sleep per week?

While I'm on it, anyone got a good webform wizard approach? I'm eagerly anticipating the asp:wizard control in Whidbey, but I can't wait that long. I've used sequential pages which used a database session dictionary in ASP, and I'm sure a big page with hidden / shown panels would work fine. What's the best way to handle this until we get the asp:wizard, though?

6 Comments

  • One of the samples in the Microsoft Press server control book is that calendar picker that you see on Expedia. You can download the source on microsoft's site somewhere.

  • Thinking about Peter's one, I'm surprised he doesn't use an approach like Andy Smith's where you can store all the JS in a .res file (and of course compile the images into the assembly)...

  • The MSPress one has a small bug in its htc: displays 28 days for March if it's not a leap year. I always thought it would be a good idea to create an internationalized version (date formats, month & day of week names from current culture). But haven't got round to it yet. If you've already done this it might be nice to post it.

  • Must be self-contained.



    Why?

  • Self contained is important to me for 3 reasons:



    1) Least important first - Easy to use. MS controls can be dropped onto a WinForm / WebForm and used; why should I have to read a readme.txt, make web.config settings, copy js files to a folder, etc., for someone else's controls.



    2) Easy to deploy - especially important when there are several developers on a project with development environments, an integration environment, multipe servers in QA and Production webfarms, etc. 5 or 10 minutes of setup / install time may not sound like much, but multiply that by all affected servers, developers, and administrators, and it often costs much more than the actual component.



    3) Not fragile - the more complex the install, the more likely the app will break, especially during an upgrade (see Rob's post I referred to above), a .NET framework upgrade, a service pack or security patch, etc. Why ask for trouble?

  • Jon Galloway,



    Could you take a look at your page at www.excentricsworld.com/calpopup.aspx



    I think it's broken. I would be nice to see how it looks like in the page. I would like to use the control in my project, but I would like to know if you experienced any problem using it? I like the control because I can change the year easily, but I don't want to have something that's difficult to maintain.

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