Chapter 9. Building Ajax-enabled controls
In this chapter:
- Script descriptors
- Introduction to Ajax-enabled controls
- Extenders
- Script controls
The power of technologies like ASP.NET lies in the ability to work with server controls and, particularly, web controls. A web control is an object that abstracts and manages a particular portion of the web page, be it a single element (like a text box) or a table (like a grid). A web control covers the tasks from the rendering of the HTML to postback handling and communication with other server controls. All of the web control’s logic is programmed, encapsulated, and executed on the server side as soon as you declare the web control on the page.
Having learned how to use the Microsoft Ajax Library to build client components, you’ll find out in this chapter how to wire them programmatically to ASP.NET server controls to obtain Ajax-enabled controls. By the end of the chapter, you’ll learn how to build ASP.NET server controls with Ajax capabilities.
In chapter 8, you saw how to create instances of client components in the page. Because the instantiation of a client component is a process that involves numerous steps besides creating a new instance, the $create method is a valid ally for successfully accomplishing this task.