Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit is as open source as Microsoft gets, as Scott Guthrie noted in his blog entry announcing the toolkit. The ASP.NET AJAX group will set up a source control repository where developers can report bugs or contribute their own controls, said Guthrie, who leads that development group.
There will also be regular binary drops. "This first release is just the beginning," Guthrie wrote. Microsoft's goal, he added, is to have the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit contain "between 50-100 useful, high-quality Atlas controls over the next few months," Guthrie wrote.
The initial release consists of nine controls. Known issues exist for some of the controls.
- CascadingDropDown:
This extender is attached to an ASP.NET DropDownList control. After a user makes a selection, the
list calls back to a Web service to get data for the next DropDownList in the set.
- Collapsible
Panel: This extender can be used with any ASP.NET Panel control. In addition, on client
postback it automatically restores its client state.
- ConfirmButtonExtender:
This catches clicks on a button-type class and displays a message to the end user.
- DragPanel: This
functionality works with any ASP.NET panel and signifies the control as the so-called "drag
handle."
- HoverMenu: Attachable
to any ASP.NET WebControl, this extender associates that control to a pop-up panel, the position of
which is specified by the developer.
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- PopupControl
Extender: This can be added to any control in order to open a pop-up window. The window itself
can support server-based processing and can contain ASP.NET server controls, HTML elements and
other content types.
- ReorderList
Control: This allows a user to change the order of a list simply by clicking on an item's
control bar and moving it to the new spot. The control can also be bound to a data source, in which
case it behaves like any other databound control.
- TextBoxWatermark
Extendter: This ASP.NET TextBox control allows a TextBox to display information to end users in
the form of a watermark based on a custom CSS style. The watermark disappears once the user starts
typing.
- ToggleButton
Extender: This CheckBox control allows a developer to use custom images to show the state of
the CheckBox without affecting its behavior.
UPDATE: Vendors Telerik and ComponentArt have announced ASP.NET AJAX support in their control packages, Guthrie wrote here. In addition, Microsoft released four more controls:
- AlwaysVisibleControl:
This extender, which applies to any ASP.NET control, keeps a control in the same position in a
browser window as a user scrolls up and down.
- ModalPopup: In this
extender, information like an "OK/Cancel" window is presented in a pop-up window that prevents
users from interacting with the rest of the page.
- DropShadow: This
applies a drop shadow to a panel.
- RoundedCorners:
This applies rounded corners to a control.
Click here to check out samples of each control before downloading them. This page also offers links to brief instructions on setting up your development environment, using a sample extender and creating a new extender.
To download the samples, go to this page.
This was first published in May 2006