Professional ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX

ASP.NET revolutionized Web application development. The platform handles many of the complexities of creating Web applications. Now ASP.NET AJAX takes the development platform even further. The lines between rich client applications and traditionally less interactive browser-based applications are being further blurred with the use of this technology.

The ASP.NET AJAX Library brings object-oriented programming to JavaScript development for modern browsers, and the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions makes it easy to write rich Web applications that communicate with the Web server asynchronously. Again, the complexities are made easy by using ASP.NET.

The new server controls that are part of ASP.NET AJAX make it simple to designate parts of the page to be updated automatically without making the user pause and wait while the data is refreshed. You can have partial page updates without writing a single line of code. Other new controls let you alert the user that background work is happening and designate regular intervals at which updates occur. In addition, the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit makes it easy to make your user interface really come to life with animations, modal dialogs, transition effects, and more.

Ajax is definitely the hot buzzword in the Web application world at the moment. Ajax is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and, in Web application development, it signifies the capability to build applications that make use of the XMLHttpRequest object.

The creation and the inclusion of the XMLHttpRequest object in JavaScript and the fact that most upper-level browsers support the use of this object led to creation of the Ajax model. Ajax applications, although they have been around for a few years, gained greater popularity after Google released a number of notable, Ajax-enabled applications such as Google Maps and Google Suggest. These applications demonstrated the value of Ajax.

Shortly thereafter, Microsoft released a beta for a new toolkit that enabled developers to incorporate Ajax features in their Web applications. This toolkit, code-named Atlas and later renamed ASP.NET AJAX, makes it extremely simple to start using Ajax features in applications today.

Prior to Visual Studio 2008, the ASP.NET AJAX product used to be a separate application that developers were required to install on their machine and the Web server that they were working with. This release gained in popularity quite rapidly and has now been made a part of the Visual Studio 2008 offering. Not only is it a part of the Visual Studio 2008 IDE, the ASP.NET AJAX product is also baked into the .NET Framework 3.5. This means that in order to use ASP.NET AJAX, developers are not going to need to install anything if they are working with ASP.NET 3.5.

Overall, Microsoft has fully integrated the entire ASP.NET AJAX experience in that developers can easily use Visual Studio and its visual designers to work with your Ajax-enabled pages and even have the full debugging story that they would want to have with their applications. Using Visual Studio 2008, developers are now able to debug straight into the JavaScript that they are using in the pages.

In addition, it is important to note that Microsoft focused a lot of attention on cross-platform compatibility with ASP.NET AJAX. Developers will find that the Ajax-enabled applications that they build upon the .NET Framework 3.5 are able to work within all the major up-level browsers out there (e.g., FireFox and Opera).

This book is aimed at experienced ASP.NET developers looking to add AJAX to their applications, and experienced Web developers who want to move to using ASP.NET and AJAX together.

In this book, I assume that you already have an understanding of how ASP.NET works. For an in-depth discussion of ASP.NET, I recommend Professional ASP.NET 3.5 by Bill Evjen, et al. (Wrox, 2008). The focus here is on how you can extend ASP.NET applications to update portio

AJAX is the de facto standard for building compelling, scalable user-friendly interactive web applications. With this book, you'll discover how to use those ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX features in order to create richer, more responsive, dynamic web sites. You'll get an overview of the architecture, including the ASP.NET server elements and the client-side JavaScript library and runtime, and you'll gain a clear understanding of how the pieces of ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX build upon each other to provide a comprehensive framework for rich application development and limitless customization.

As you build your knowledge of the underlying ASP.NET platform, you'll also learn how to effectively use Visual Studio 2008 to build ASP.NET solutions that maximize the new AJAX capabilities.

What you will learn from this book

• How the latest AJAX version is part of the .NET Framework 3.5, requiring no separate installation

• The benefits of cross-platform compatibility within all the major up-level browsers that exist

• Ways that Visual Studio works with AJAX-enabled pages

• Techniques for testing, debugging, and deploying ASP.NET AJAX applications

• Tips for building custom controls and working with animations

• How to access databases and Web Services

Who this book is for

This book is for ASP.NET developers who are interested in using AJAX to enhance existing web sites or develop new, more interactive web applications.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.