ASP.NET AJAX Control Development with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Framework

Book excerpt: This Wrox Blox empowers developers to develop ASP.NET AJAX controls by giving them a look "under the hood" of AJAX controls. While this Wrox Blox focuses on Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5, developers should know that the concepts for creating custom controls in Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0 with ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 are very similar. Visual Studio 2008 offers many improvements concerning JavaScript editing/debugging, and .NET 3.5 includes ASP.NET AJAX right out of the box, simplifying the install to get AJAX up and running. This Wrox Blox takes developers gradually through creating a custom ASP.NET AJAX control. JavaScript is essential for writing ASP.NET AJAX controls, but quite a few developers still struggle in this area. Given this fact, this Wrox Blox takes a compressive look at JavaScript and the improvements that the Microsoft AJAX Library provides to client-side development, giving readers the skills they need to delve straight into creating a “news scroller” type control from start to finish with step-by-step instructions throughout. Introduction to AJAX Web Controls 1 Visual Studio 2008 and AJAX 2 Microsoft AJAX Library 7 JavaScript and Object-Oriented Programming 7 Using Objects in JavaScript 8 Emulating Classes 9 Microsoft AJAX Library 11 Getting Started with AJAX Controls 12 Refactoring and Understanding the Basic Control 12 Registering the Client Control 16 Creating a Test Web Site 17 Creating the Basic Server Control 18 Creating the Basic Client Control 26 Enhancing the DynamicScroller Control — Properties 29 Enhancing the DynamicScroller Control — Events 31 Summary 35 About Damien White 37