New ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Release

Yesterday the ASP.NET AJAXControl Toolkit team released an updated version.  You candownload it from the http://ajax.asp.net web-site, and run samplesbuilt with it on the online samples page here.

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit isa free download and contains more than 40 additional AJAX controlsand components that work on top of the core ASP.NET AJAX 1.0release.  In addition to having Microsoft developerscontribute, the project also has more than 15 non-Microsoftcontributors adding great features and controls. 

You can download either a binaryversion of the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit to use (just add toyour toolbox and you are good to go), or you can download thesource for the project itself and tweak/extend it if you want (allsource is released under a permissive license allowing you to makeyour own modifications to it). 

New ToolkitScriptCombinerSupport

One of the biggest improvements withthis toolkit release is support for a new"ToolkitScriptCombiner" control.  This controlallows you to replace the default <asp:scriptmanager> controlbehavior, and supports the ability to dynamically merge multipleclient-side Javascript scripts into a single file that isdownloaded to the client at runtime.  Better yet, only theJavascript needed by the specific controls on the page are includedwithin the combined download, to make it as small aspossible.

The big benefit with this feature isthat is can significantly reduce the number of Javascript files thebrowser needs to download, as well as reduce the overall downloadsize of the scripts.  This can provide some really niceperformance and load-time wins on pages.  Best of all - youdon't need to change any code or refactor any script yourselfto take advantage of this.

Other ASP.NET AJAX ControlToolkit Improvements

This week's release contains anumber of other new improvements, including:

• More than 125 bug fixes

• Extended client side event support- new client side event handler extensibility points are availablewith common toolkit server controls

• ASP.NET Validation Controls nowwork with the Toolkit Controls

• Accessibility fixes: Slider andAutoComplete have support for high contrast and other controls haveJAWS accessibility support built-in when doing AJAXcallbacks.

• Animation support: More toolkitcontrols now have generic animation support built-in

• Nice design mode improvements forthe controls, including: 1) designer support for theTabContainer.  You can now select/add/remove tabs within thetabcontainer directly from the designer, and you can directly editboth the content and the title, 2) page methods can nowautomatically be generated for those extender controls that callweb-services, 3) nice icon support within the toolbox.

You can learn more about all of theimprovements in blog posts from Shawn, David, Kirti and Garbin.

ASP.NET AJAX Control ToolkitVideos

Joe Stagner has been cranking awayat recording "How Do I?" videos for the AJAX ControlToolkit, and now has 39 free ASP.NET AJAX "How Do I?"videos hosted on the www.asp.net site. 

 

Click here to watch them for free and learn howto-do common tasks with ASP.NET AJAX and the ASP.NET AJAX ControlToolkit.  The most recent videos are now available to downloadin a variety of video and audio formats, including: WMV, Zune,iPod, PSP, MPEG-4, and 3GP.

ASP.NET AJAXBooks

As I mentioned in my links post from last week, the first booksspecifically targeting the final ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 release wererecently published.  Below are links to two of them that areshipping today:

  

Both books include a chapter onusing the controls within the ASP.NET AJAX ControlToolkit.

Hope this helps,

Scott