Tips & Tricks for ASP.NET, IIS, and Visual Web Developer

Tip#62: Did you know… How to add Ajax Control Toolkit to the toolbox?

Steps to add Ajax Control Toolkit for Framework 3.5 SP1
Steps to add Ajax Control Toolkit for Framework 2.0

Ajax Control Toolkit for Framework 3.5 SP1

Following are the steps to add Ajax Control Toolkit to the toolbox for ASP.NET 3.5 webs in Visual Studio 2008 SP1

1. Download Ajax Control toolkit from here (you can download AjaxControlToolkit-Framework3.5Sp1-dllonly.zip this would contain the dll only). 
   
2. Extract the content of the zip file downloaded in steps 2 above.
   
3. Launch Visual Studio 2008
   
4. Create new (or open an existing) 2.0 Web Application Project or Website.
   
5. Right click Toolbox and click on Add Tab. Name the new tab ACT 3.0 or anything you wish to call it.
   
6. Right click toolbox under the ACT 3.0 tab added in the above step and click choose items
   
    
   
7. Click Browse and browse to AjaxControlToolkitBinary\AjaxControlToolkit.dll extracted in step 3.
   
   
8. Click OK
   
9. And the tab in the toolbox will be populated with the ACT controls. You can read more about the recently added new controls to the toolkit May 2009 release at the ajaxcontroltoolkit codeplex site.
   

Ajax Control Toolkit for Framework 2.0

There might be a requirement to add the toolkit for legacy ASP.Net 2.0 applications.

Following are the steps to add Ajax Control Toolkit to the toolbox in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 for ASP.NET 2.0 webs

1. Download and install ASP.NET Ajax Extensions 1.0 from here.
   ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 is a set of technologies to add AJAX  support to ASP.NET 2.0
   
2. Download Ajax Control toolkit version 1.0.20229 from here (this would download AjaxControlToolkit-nosource.zip). More details about the toolkit can be found at ajaxcontroltoolkit codeplex site here.
   
3. Extract the content of the zip file downloaded in steps 2 above or extract the AjaxControlToolkit.dll from AjaxControlToolkit-NoSource.zip\SampleWebSite\Bin.
   
4. Launch Visual Studio 2008
   
5. Create new (or open an existing) 2.0 Web Application Project or Website.
   
6. You will notice Ajax extensions tab is added to the toolbox (this is due to Step 1 installed the Ajax extensions for a 2.0 website)
   
   
   
7. Right click Toolbox and click on Add Tab. Name the new tab ACT 1.0.
   
8. Right click toolbox under the ACT 1.0 tab added in the above step and click choose items
   
    
   
9. Click Browse and browse to the AjaxControlToolkit.dll extracted in step 3. (If you have extracted the whole zip file you would find the dll in SampleWebSite\Bin\ )
   
   
   
10. Click OK
11. And the tab in the toolbox will be populated with the ACT controls.
     

More about Ajax Control toolkit can be found at http://ajaxcontroltoolkit.codeplex.com/

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer