Professional ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) [Paperback]

Bill Evjen (Author), Matt Gibbs (Author), Dan Wahlin (Author), Dave Reed (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470392177 | ISBN-13: 978-0470392171 | Publication Date: February 3, 2009 | Edition: 1

ASP.NET revolutionized Web application development. The platform handles many of the complexities of creating Web applications. Now ASP.NET AJAX takes the development platform even further. The lines between rich client applications and traditionally less interactive browser-based applications are being further blurred with the use of this technology.

The ASP.NET AJAX Library brings object-oriented programming to JavaScript development for modern browsers, and the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions makes it easy to write rich Web applications that communicate with the Web server asynchronously. Again, the complexities are made easy by using ASP.NET.

The new server controls that are part of ASP.NET AJAX make it simple to designate parts of the page to be updated automatically without making the user pause and wait while the data is refreshed. You can have partial page updates without writing a single line of code. Other new controls let you alert the user that background work is happening and designate regular intervals at which updates occur. In addition, the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit makes it easy to make your user interface really come to life with animations, modal dialogs, transition effects, and more.

Ajax is definitely the hot buzzword in the Web application world at the moment. Ajax is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and, in Web application development, it signifies the capability to build applications that make use of the XMLHttpRequest object.

The creation and the inclusion of the XMLHttpRequest object in JavaScript and the fact that most upper-level browsers support the use of this object led to creation of the Ajax model. Ajax applications, although they have been around for a few years, gained greater popularity after Google released a number of notable, Ajax-enabled applications such as Google Maps and Google Suggest. These applications demonstrated the value of Ajax.

Shortly thereafter, Microsoft released a beta for a new toolkit that enabled developers to incorporate Ajax features in their Web applications. This toolkit, code-named Atlas and later renamed ASP.NET AJAX, makes it extremely simple to start using Ajax features in applications today.

Prior to Visual Studio 2008, the ASP.NET AJAX product used to be a separate application that developers were required to install on their machine and the Web server that they were working with. This release gained in popularity quite rapidly and has now been made a part of the Visual Studio 2008 offering. Not only is it a part of the Visual Studio 2008 IDE, the ASP.NET AJAX product is also baked into the .NET Framework 3.5. This means that in order to use ASP.NET AJAX, developers are not going to need to install anything if they are working with ASP.NET 3.5.

Overall, Microsoft has fully integrated the entire ASP.NET AJAX experience in that developers can easily use Visual Studio and its visual designers to work with your Ajax-enabled pages and even have the full debugging story that they would want to have with their applications. Using Visual Studio 2008, developers are now able to debug straight into the JavaScript that they are using in the pages.

In addition, it is important to note that Microsoft focused a lot of attention on cross-platform compatibility with ASP.NET AJAX. Developers will find that the Ajax-enabled applications that they build upon the .NET Framework 3.5 are able to work within all the major up-level browsers out there (e.g., FireFox and Opera).

This book is aimed at experienced ASP.NET developers looking to add AJAX to their applications, and experienced Web developers who want to move to using ASP.NET and AJAX together.

In this book, I assume that you already have an understanding of how ASP.NET works. For an in-depth discussion of ASP.NET, I recommend Professional ASP.NET 3.5 by Bill Evjen, et al. (Wrox, 2008). The focus here is on how you can extend ASP.NET applications to update portions of the page asynchronously and to add richer UI elements to a page. ASP.NET AJAX makes it easy to enrich your existing application or to design a new application to provide a better experience for users. The differences among modern browsers have been abstracted, allowing you to write to a common set of APIs and trust that the user will get the correct behavior whether they are using Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari.

If you know how to author ASP.NET pages, you can easily start using the Microsoft AJAX library to manipulate the browser’s Document Object Model and communicate with the server to update the user’s view of data without forcing them to wait for the entire page to be refreshed.

This book covers ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX. It does not cover ASP.NET 3.5, on which ASP.NET AJAX is built. The examples lead you from the core of what is included in the ASP.NET AJAX Library through the core controls you would first start using. You build on that using the core JavaScript library and the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit before covering debugging, deployment, and custom control development.

The ASP.NET 3.5 release includes the Microsoft AJAX Library as well as the server controls that can be used in ASP.NET pages to extend applications, making them more rich and interactive. It does so by leveraging the ASP.NET AJAX Library, which is JavaScript that runs in the browser. The server controls and JavaScript Library work together to let you update HTML with data obtained asynchronously from the server. The ASP.NET application services are exposed to JavaScript classes in the ASP.NET AJAX Library, making authentication and personalization accessible from the browser.

Chapter 1 introduces you to ASP.NET AJAX. This book discusses the need for AJAX Libraries and explain how ASP.NET AJAX compares to other AJAX Libraries. You will see how ASP.NET AJAX is composed of client and server pieces and that you can use the client library with any server platform you choose. In Chapter 2, the focus is on the most popular and easily applied feature of ASP.NET, the UpdatePanel control. This control allows you to automatically update portions of a page asynchronously, without subjecting the user to a visible pause while the page refreshes. Chapters 3 and 4 give you some key information about working with JavaScript and how the ASP.NET AJAX Library makes development with JavaScript easier. The book then works through several key features, including control of script resources and working with the ScriptManager control in Chapter 5, the new ASP.NET 3.5 ability to work with the back button in Chapter 6, and the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit in Chapter 7 and all it has to offer for creating rich user interfaces. The next chapter, Chapter 8, looks at how to use ASP.NET’s application services (such as the Membership and Role management systems) with ASP.NET AJAX. Chapter 9 looks at networking objects. Chapter 10 looks at working with animations in ASP.NET AJAX. Chapter 11 shows you how to develop custom AJAX controls. Chapters 12, 13, and 14 shows the reader how to incorporate Ajax in some other ASP.NET core features such as Web Parts, localization, and state management. Chapter 15 looks at what is required to test and debug Ajax applications, and finally, Chapter 16 explores how to deploy ASP.NET AJAX applications.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

AJAX is the de facto standard for building compelling, scalable user-friendly interactive web applications. With this book, you'll discover how to use those ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX features in order to create richer, more responsive, dynamic web sites. You'll get an overview of the architecture, including the ASP.NET server elements and the client-side JavaScript library and runtime, and you'll gain a clear understanding of how the pieces of ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX build upon each other to provide a comprehensive framework for rich application development and limitless customization.

As you build your knowledge of the underlying ASP.NET platform, you'll also learn how to effectively use Visual Studio 2008 to build ASP.NET solutions that maximize the new AJAX capabilities.

What you will learn from this book

• How the latest AJAX version is part of the .NET Framework 3.5, requiring no separate installation

• The benefits of cross-platform compatibility within all the major up-level browsers that exist

• Ways that Visual Studio works with AJAX-enabled pages

• Techniques for testing, debugging, and deploying ASP.NET AJAX applications

• Tips for building custom controls and working with animations

• How to access databases and Web Services

Who this book is for

This book is for ASP.NET developers who are interested in using AJAX to enhance existing web sites or develop new, more interactive web applications.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

Product Details

• Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (February 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470392177
• ISBN-13: 978-0470392171
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #606,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #57 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Ajax

More About the Author

Bill Evjen is an active proponent of .NET technologies and community-based learning initiatives for .NET. He has been actively involved with .NET since the first bits were released in 2000. In the same year, Bill founded the St. Louis .NET User Group (www.stlnet.org), one of the world's first such groups. Bill is also the founder and former executive director of the International .NET Association (www.ineta.org), which represents more than 500,000 members worldwide. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, Bill is an acclaimed author and speaker on ASP.NET and XML Web Services. He has authored or co-authored more than twenty books including Professional ASP.NET 4, Professional C# 4 and .NET 4, ASP.NET Professional Secrets, XML Web Services for ASP.NET, and Web Services Enhancements: Understanding the WSE for Enterprise Applications (all published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.).

In addition to writing, Bill is a speaker at numerous conferences, including DevConnections, VSLive, and TechEd. Along with these items, Bill works closely with Microsoft as a Microsoft Regional Director and an MVP. Bill is the CIO for Swank Motion Pictures (www.swank.com), a company focused on film and TV distribution. You can reach Bill via Twitter at @billevjen.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Overall Book, March 8, 2009

By 

Brian Mains - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

There are quite a bit of books on the market about ASP.NET and AJAX. The book "Professional ASP.NET AJAX" from Wrox is a good overview of the AJAX framework. The authors of the book cover a wide array of subjects that you don't find in every AJAX book. The book covers topics like localization and globalization, custom AJAX controls, web services, the WebRequest object, AjaxControlToolkit overview, and more.
As a professional series book, the book does cover a good amount of material to deserve the label. After introducing the reader with the basics, the book moves into the ScriptManager control and all it has to offer, including the new script combining feature. This is followed by a chapter on the back button, history points, and partial updates features.
The book covers AJAX networking and using the WebRequest object and its ability to request information from the server, which has the ability to contact the server and receive the updated HTML as a response. This chapter surprisingly didn't cover web services, but an adjacent chapter covers the in-built application and profile services that allow profiling and login/logout functionality all in client script. The book continues to cover state management; error handling and Sys.Debug; and deployment of AJAX-enabled applications. For deployment, there was a lot of information that's important to know about deploying an application I never knew about.
The book covers customization; it features developing a custom AJAX control that changes its content on the client-side, along with an AJAX extender using the AJAX Control Toolkit. The book looks at the basics of these, as the development approaches vary significantly. The subsequent chapter focuses on embedding AJAX code into web parts using the existing web part framework.
Overall, the book is well-written and conveys its points clearly. I think some of the content is organized in an awkward way; for instance, the book briefly looks at localization early in the book with a good explanation, then features a full chapter later in the book. It felt like it was repeating itself in a few places. The chapters are written fluently; the reading of the book isn't dry at all, which makes for a good tech book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good introductory book updated and improved, February 9, 2009

By 

Techie Evan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

Updating and improving upon its predecessor Professional ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX, this book now provides fuller discussion of the AJAX Toolkit and how to build custom client- and server-side controls, and dedicated chapters on animations and localization. It also added one chapter each on how to ajaxify WebParts when building portals and how to enable browser navigation history support, a feature that is not enabled in the framework by default because of overhead in the potential need to create iframes behind the scenes for some browsers. Both additional chapters are very well written and make the book even more valuable. I would have liked to see more discussion of recommended practices addressing security and testing concerns, including availability of AJAX-aware testing tools that work well with the framework. Also, I think that removing the brief section on accessibility concerns with AJAX from the previous edition is a mistake. Overall, however, I like this book very much.