If you are frustrated from those clunky web application interfaces, then it's time to provide some push to your web apps into some slick, responsive feel direction. The question is, “How would you do that?” Don't worry, the answer is "AJAX".
With traditional web pages and applications, every time a user clicks on something (such as a Submit Button), the browser sends a request to the server and the server responds with an entirely new page.
But by using “Ajax”, your pages and applications only ask the server for what they really need, just the parts of a page that need to change and just the parts that the server must provide. That makes less traffic, smaller updates and less time sitting around waiting for page refreshes.
For making your IDE compatible with Ajax, we need to install the Ajax Toolkit in Visual Studio. Let us start with the procedure.
Step 1
Open your browser and go to the official website of Ajax toolkit ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. There you will find ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit v15.1. Just click on that and your download will start. Now, just sit back for few minutes for the download to finish.
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Step 2
The file you downloaded is in Zip format, so first unzip it to anywhere you want. Then, open Visual Studio and create an empty website or you can open your working website where you want to add Ajax.
Step 3
Open your toolbox (CTRL+ ALT + X) in Visual Studio10. (For those who have create an empty website, they need to first create a web form and only then can they see the toolbox item. So just go to your website and select Add New Item -> Web form.)
Step 4
In Toolbox. go to the bottom part where you see “General” as the last control, after blank spaces are there. In that blank area, right-click and seelct Add tab. Now, the name of that tab is "Ajax Control Toolkit". (There's already a tab for the AJAX Extension in your toolbox but it has very few controls and due to that we are installing an entirely new Ajax Toolkit).
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Step 5
Right-click on the Ajax Control Toolkit tab then choose Items and you will get the “Choose Toolbox Items” window. Look at the following images that makes things clear.
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Step 6
From Choose Toolbox items you need to browse to your Ajax Toolkit that you downloaded and unzipped. Click on Browse and go to your Unzipped Ajax toolkit. (You'll see in the file name we need to includ the .dll or .exe file only). Find in your Ajax toolkit AjaxControlToolkit.dll and add it (open it). You will see in your Choose Toolbox window many new Controls have been added.
Now, click OK.
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These are the new controls in the toolbox under the Ajax Toolkit. You can use it by just adding some references and namespaces. (I'll get back to those tutorials some day.)
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I hope you liked this. I'll get back with AJAX tutorials some day.