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

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

WebDevTools — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:58:51 GMT

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

Download Ajax Control toolkit from here (you can download AjaxControlToolkit-Framework3.5Sp1-dllonly.zip this would contain the dll only).
Extract the content of the zip file downloaded in steps 2 above.
Launch Visual Studio 2008
Create new (or open an existing) 2.0 Web Application Project or Website.
Right click Toolbox and click on Add Tab. Name the new tab ACT 3.0 or anything you wish to call it.
Right click toolbox under the ACT 3.0 tab added in the above step and click choose items
Click Browse and browse to AjaxControlToolkitBinary\AjaxControlToolkit.dll extracted in step 3.
Click OK
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

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
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.
Extract the content of the zip file downloaded in steps 2 above or extract the AjaxControlToolkit.dll from AjaxControlToolkit-NoSource.zip\SampleWebSite\Bin.
Launch Visual Studio 2008
Create new (or open an existing) 2.0 Web Application Project or Website.
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)
Right click Toolbox and click on Add Tab. Name the new tab ACT 1.0.
Right click toolbox under the ACT 1.0 tab added in the above step and click choose items
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\ )
Click OK
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

Tip #35: Did you know…How to add Intellisense from script libraries for JS files?

WebDevTools — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:50:08 GMT

Here is an example to add intellisense for JS files in VS 2008.

So, you have two Javascript files

Jscript1.js with the following code

function validateForm() {
}

and Jscript2.js (wherein you want current JScript file to show intellisense including objects & functions declared in Jscript1.js)

Now to add intellisense, from the solution explorer drag drop Jscript1.js into Jscript2.js.

You will notice that the following Jscript document comment has been added to the Jscript2.js file.

/// <reference path="JScript1.js" />

And now you can start using the intellisense, try typing in validateForm in Jscript2.js.

Thanks,
Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip # 30: Did you know... Ajax Extender controls UI behaves differently in VS 2008 than in VS 2005

WebDevTools — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:12:00 GMT

In VS 2005, you can drag and drop an extender control anywhere on the design surface. However, in VS 2008, you can drop an extender only on an ASP control which the extender can extend its functionality. When you drag an extender and hover it over a control, if the control can support the extender, you would see the cursor turn into a plus (+) sign. If you hover an extender over the blank design surface, or over a control which is not supported by the extender, the cursor will turn into a stop sign which indicates that it can't be dropped at that position.

Another difference is, in VS 2005, an extender is shown in the design surface after being added to the page. However, at runtime, the extender is not shown at all. This makes it hard for developers to truly know how the page will look like at runtime when designing the page. In VS 2008, we have changed that behavior by completely hiding extenders in the design view. The user can recognize if a control is having an extender by checking if the control's smart tag has a little green icon shown.

Anh Phan

SDET, Visual Web Developer