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