Programming ASP.NET AJAX

Chapter 12. Autocompleting User Input, Fighting Spam, and More

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit contains an incredible number of controls—too many, in fact, to list here. And while the project is ultimately controlled by Microsoft and does receive support from individual members of the Microsoft AJAX team, there is no guarantee that APIs and functionality will remain the same. After all, the company provides no customer support and does accept (in fact encourages) contributions from third parties. Meanwhile, a printed book can only provide a snapshot of conditions as they existed at the time of production. So, this chapter will demonstrate a few of my favorite controls as they were at the time of printing.

Warning

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit is a very dynamic project. All of it is subject to change at one point or another. However, the Control Toolkit team strives to keep APIs stable unless there are very good reasons to change them, so you should not expect to come across too many surprises. This chapter will restrict itself to introductory examples of the most important (arguably) of these controls. Updates to these listings will be posted on the web site for this book (see the Preface).

Creating an Accordion Pane

Many usability studies suggest that users do not like scrolling. With the addition of a little bit of JavaScript, scrolling may be avoided. The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit’s Accordion control coordinates the presentation of several panes simultaneously but with only ...