It’s easy to think of the ASP.NET AJAX framework primarily in terms of the server controls it provides. However, make sure that you don’t overlook the client script helper classes at your disposal. Many of them are very useful and surprisingly powerful.

In the next several posts, I’ll be examining these client side helper classes and hopefully giving you some ideas for more effectively using them.

In this first post, I’m going to take a closer look at $addHandler.

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Mike’s been extremely busy this month, but found time to update Inline Edit Box .NET for us. Changes since version 0.5 include:

• Added option for single click or double click (new Public Property called ClickMode: enum [SingleClick|DoubleClick])
• Added ClientIDSuffix property to allow for repeater/web control objects.
• Added Mode property. Allows to specify Admin or Display modes.
• Fixed PostBack issues with regards to control properties.

Head over to the Inline Edit Box .NET page for the download link and more information.

A problem that has always plagued web developers has been providing detailed progress indication for server-side tasks. The stateless nature of the HTTP protocol makes implementing a mechanism for constant, stateful progress information cumbersome. The main problem is that a given group of server side tasks will generally only result in one, aggregate response from the server.

In the ASP.NET community, several solutions have been offered. Some even provide an entire framework for monitoring the status of tasks in progress. However, they are convoluted and depend on constant server polling. I find polling for progress indication to be an inefficient approximation, when exact data is readily available.

With that in mind, I’d like to share an alternate method that I’ve used in the past with great success.

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If you’ve made much use of the ASP.NET AJAX Timer control, you may have noticed that it can behave somewhat unexpectedly. In this post, I’m going to take a closer look at how the Timer works and the most significant factor that influences it: Location.

Where the timer is placed on the page actually varies how it operates. As a Timer’s delay interval approaches the processing time of its resulting PostBack, the difference that the Timer’s location makes becomes very significant.

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This is a technique that I really like. It’s excellently suited to intranet sites and administrative interfaces, where your users are typically familiar enough with the application to know which text they can click to edit. It’s actually very easy to implement, with a small amount of JavaScript.

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If you Google the error you’ll find a lot of results about updating your web.config to enable ASP.NET AJAX (which is a necessary step), but what if you’ve already done that? Not only will your search be an exercise in frustration, but it will lead you down the wrong path completely. Maybe I can help.

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I’ve noticed a lot of discussion lately regarding methods to refresh an UpdatePanel via client script. This is very easy on the server side, of course. You can just call UpdatePanel.Update(). However, on the client side, the most common solutions I’ve been seeing just don’t feel right.

Many will advise you to use a hidden button control inside the UpdatePanel, manipulated via button.click(), to trigger a partial postback of the UpdatePanel. While it does work, I never have been able to get past the kludgey nature of that solution.

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