Today Google put the GWT (Google Web Toolkit) online which includes several UI controls, but also the possibility to exchange data between server and client and back. While downloading the framework and watching the examples I found following page: Sharing objects between Java source and JavaScript. Hm, if I compare the data types that are supported with Ajax.NET Professional I feel happy. Since I added more .NET 2.0 support like generic Dictionary or Nullable types... I can use any code that I'm currently using, great. In the last weeks I removed a lot of old common ASP.NET postbacks to AJAX requests. Most features could easily replaced by adding only the AjaxMethod attribute, no other C# code had to be changed. On the client-side, of course, I had to write some JavaScript, but this you have to do everytime you are talking about Web 2.0 or AJAX.

Maybe I should do some Web 2.0 development to add UI controls and effects to my library. Currently I'm still concentrated on doing the AJAX stuff. I will do some more tests with Web 2.0 frameworks like the Yahoo or Google framework. Yahoo has done a lot of great work on controls, and as I can see it should be very easy to use Ajax.NET Professional with the Yahoo UI controls. I will put some examples online the next days, hopefully.

6 Comments

• Michael Schwarz said Wednesday, May 17, 2006 6:50:00 PM

  You are absolutly right with your comment, I don't want to build it into Ajax.NET directly, but that it will work with Ajax.NET great.
  
  I have already created some nice things that are interessted, like AutoComplete, SitemapTree, DropDownBehavior,... and I will release these controls/script files in the next days, maybe "Ajax.NET Professional UI Controls".
  
  They will use parts of the Ajax.NET framwork like the prototype functions.
  
  While playing around with several Web 2.0 I see that all are doing some parts wrong. This is the reason why I will add files you can use, but you have to add those by hand.
  
  Conclusion: Ajax.NET Professional will be the professional framework to communicate with .NET code without leaning AJAX stuff and JSON serialization.

• Fabio said Wednesday, May 17, 2006 9:09:00 PM

  I think what we have 2 "ways" here:
  The "boom" of HEAVY Ajax UI controls by Yahoo, Google and MS (Atlas) and the specialized work of the Ajax.Net Professional.
  The Michael's job is very important, because have low memory usage, low bandwidth cost, is is very fast and have a very clean ajax implementation.
  Certainly in future I will need use some these "Ajax UI", like Atlas, but I will not stop of use Ajax.Net in several situations, because of the simplicity!
  And of course, if I have "Ajax.NET Professional UI Controls" equivalent to Atlas controls, the choice is evident ;-)
  
  Thank you for your nice job, Michael, we have with you!
  
  []'s
  Fabio

• INeedADip said Wednesday, May 17, 2006 10:23:00 PM

  If you do decide to start some sort of "Ajax.NET Professional UI Controls" let me know. I would love to contribute.
  
  I think it would be a great project and would love to help. Especially with some sort of premise like "All controls are based on yui and Ajax.NET" (or the like). I say the Yahoo UI libraries because they did a great job providing basic functions like Events, DOM access, and even basic drag-drop functionality. I like them because they didn't couple a lot of "widgets" inside the base library.
  
  Anyways..I think I'm rambling....

• Michael Schwarz said Wednesday, May 17, 2006 10:25:00 PM

  I will put a first example online tomorrow morning... autocomplete that is working in Firefox and Internet Explorer first.

• Ryan Fritts said Thursday, May 18, 2006 1:45:00 AM

  Michael...
  
  It would be great if you built an optional bridge between your Ajax.NET code and the different UI libraries (moo.fx, scriptaculous, YUI Content...) That you could (en- / dis-)able in the web.config, and perhaps a spec. on which supported UI scripts you want. If Ajax.NET had a tighter integration with some of the common UI script libraries it would be tremendous. There is great potential in bridging the Ajax backend stuff (Ajax.NET) with the fancy UI libraries (moo.fx, scriptaculous, etc) - AND I, for one, would love to help you work on it in any way... i will email you tomorrow morning concerning...
  
  Ciao.
  Ryan

• Liming said Thursday, May 25, 2006 4:30:34 PM

  I agree with Ryan. Since AjaxPro is a more like a data access layer, it will be nice to provide some kind of bridge so I can use the retrived data (classes, dataset, whatever) My biggest issue right now is hwo to bind the retrieved data to other javascript libraries like dojo, scriptaculous and what not.