Beginning Web Development, Silverlight, and ASP.NET AJAX

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CHAPTER 12 ■ AJAX EXTENSIONS FOR ASP.NET
Editions of ASP.NET AJAX
The web landscape is changing and evolving rapidly, and the tools needed to keep up
also change and evolve. With this in mind, Microsoft has provided a number of optional
add-ons to ASP.NET AJAX. These will change over time, but as of the 1.0 release, the
options available to you are as follows:
ASP.NET AJAX Core: These extensions to ASP.NET include the server controls and
client libraries discussed in this chapter and later in this book.
Control Toolkit: This provides a number of client-side controls that implement common
functionality, such as calendars, tabs, watermarked text boxes, and more.
ASP.NET AJAX Futures: As the platform evolves, additional server and client controls
and libraries are available on a Community Technical Preview (CTP) basis. These are
kept separate from the core download.
AJAX Library: Should you not want to use ASP.NET on the front end, but make the
most of the value-added functionality on the client side, the JavaScript libraries are
made available for you to download and use in your applications.
For the rest of this chapter, you’ll be looking at the core part of ASP.NET AJAX. In the
next section, you’ll look into downloading it and using it to create your first ASP.NET AJAX
application.
Getting Started with ASP.NET AJAX
The ASP.NET AJAX Core library can be downloaded from the Microsoft AJAX site, at
http://asp.net/ajax/. After downloading and running the installer, you’ll see the Welcome
screen (see Figure 12-2).