T2 AJAX with the UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control Toolkit

11/16/2010

9:15 am - 10:30 am

Level: Intermediate

Prerequisite: None

Wally McClure

Wallace McClure

Partner

Scalable Development, Inc

Wallace B. McClure is a Microsoft MVP, an ASPInsider and a partner in Scalable Development Inc. He's authored books on software architecture, ADO.NET and SQL Server, AJAX, and iPhone programming with Mono and MonoTouch. You can read McClure's blog at morewally.com.

AJAX is a technology that provides a significant amount of user interaction within the web browser. With ASP.NET 2 AJAX, Microsoft shipped a set of client side and server side AJAX technologies. Recently, Microsoft announced that they are transitioning their client side AJAX technologies; however, they are keeping and will continue to build on the server side AJAX technology. This session will focus on the server side AJAX technologies in the UpdatePanel. With the UpdatePanel, the ASP.NET team has provided an easy way to integrate AJAX functionality into WebForms applications. This session will focus on:

  • UpdatePanel.
    • Introduction. The UpdatePanel will be introduced along with some of the rules that must be followed to use it properly.
    • History. Users have been trained that clicking on the back button will take the application to the previous state of the application. We’ll explore how to implement support for History, so that when a user clicks the back button they get the action that they expect.
    • Client side events. The UpdatePanel exposes a set of client side events that are similar to server side events. We’ll look at what these are good for and how to implement them.
  • WebForms. We’ll look at some of the improvements in ASP.NET 4 WebForms that make working with AJAX simpler.
  • AJAX Control Toolkit.
    • Introduction. We’ll do an introduction to the AJAX Control Toolkit. What is it and how it can help out WebForms developers.
    • Creating your own control just like the ones in the AJAX Control Toolkit.
  • Optimization. We’ll explore the process to optimize ASP.NET applications that use WebForms, the UpdatePanel, and the AJAX Control Toolkit.

You will learn:

  • How to immediately improve your productivity, implement AJAX into your existing WebForms applications, and provide the interactivity and responsiveness that users want in their applications
  • How to provide new UI controls through the Control Toolkit that can make users go “WOW”
  • How to provide this in an optimized way