Hello Kirti

Hello Kirti moving to MSDN

2007-10-07T10:29:24Z

MSDN is the right location for this blog since it is targeted towards developers. It was a mistake on my part to create it on Technet. Apparently my actions are irreversible though. Since MSDN and Technet blogs do not have any blog migration story(no web service wrappers for the blogml support) I am supposed to move the blog posts over manually. I will do that at leisure. All the existing posts will still be here but from now onwards all new posts will be made at my new MSDN blog . Hope to see you...(read more)

Community Contributions in Toolkit release 10920

2007-09-24T10:19:26Z

When I wrote my previous blog post I was in a rush to make the release announcement because we had a lot of users waiting eagerly for it. But I did not get a chance to thank our users who contributed patches to the Toolkit and made the release a success. I would like to call out their names and the fixes they made. Contributor Toolkit Work Item # Description of the fix Phani Raj 9043 AutoComplete list items can now have additional data associated with them which allows them to behave like an ASP.NET...(read more)

Toolkit Release 10920

2007-09-21T19:45:00Z

This has been a long awaited release and has lots of important bug fixes. We were unable to get the Test Framework ready in time and hope to get that out later. The release notes talk about it in detail at this new sample website location . The binaries can be downloaded from the Toolkit Release page . Please try it out and let us know if you run into any issues....(read more)

SlideShow navigation

2007-09-17T08:10:00Z

I have written a simple example that uses the SlideShow extender and demonstrates some of its cool features. The sample... provides additional context to the user by showing the previous and next slides by hooking into the 'slideChanging' event that SlideShow exposes. and it uses the images as navigation buttons to avoid overwhelming the user with too many controls. This is possible since SlideShow targets any control of type Image . I used an ImageButton instead to make it clickable. In the example,...(read more)

Toolkit showcase

2007-09-07T09:44:00Z

We are compiling a list of websites to showcase on the Toolkit page that is a part of the ASP.NET website . Details on how the page will end up looking like have not been fleshed out yet. Just like this ASP.NET AJAX showcase displays interesting websites built on top of ASP.NET AJAX , we would like to share a collection of websites using the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit . Here are our selection criteria. Note: These are just the minimum requirements and meeting them does not guarantee that the website...(read more)

Toolkit update

2007-09-07T04:02:00Z

It has been a while since we released so we would like to update our users with the latest happenings in the Toolkit world. Our next release is scheduled to be around the 14th of September . What will it include? New test framework and tests: It will include a new testing framework and wrappers for Toolkit components. The old tests have been migrated over as well. Some of the advantages of the new testing system would be: Test authoring made simple and fast by having it in managed code. This will...(read more)

Toolkit support for .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 Beta2

2007-07-27T05:39:00Z

The next wave of Visual Studio products coming out from the Developer Division in Microsoft promises a richer development experience than its predecessors. Features that deserve special mention since they are particularly relevant to the Toolkit are Javascript intellisense and ASP.NET AJAX Extender designer support. The Beta 2 version went out of the door today and we backed it up with a nifty "Orcas" Toolkit that works very well with the new designer support. You can download it from the Toolkit...(read more)

How to make localization in the Toolkit work for you?

2007-06-29T05:11:00Z

FAQ # ...: Why does the Toolkit add resources binaries to a website's bin directory? To explain the motivation behind this I have put up a wiki on our CodePlex site that details how to make the most of the Localization features without getting overwhelmed by the language resource binaries. We believe that the defaults we have set work best for users who are interested in localizing their websites as well as users who do not need that feature at all. It is now very easy to develop, configure and deploy...(read more)

Lather, rinse and release

2007-06-19T06:17:00Z

We had a Toolkit release last week and our product support medium, the forums , gave us instant feedback. So what happens when issues in the Toolkit prevent our customers from taking full advantage of it and block their core scenarios? We do not have service packs delivered 3 months after we release; that is way too late. After all, we release every couple of months which means that our response needs to be pretty quick. We follow up with a refresh release that patches the problems . Shawn Burke...(read more)

Mind your language!

2007-06-12T19:38:00Z

The Toolkit supports localization since the 10301 release. The work involved included basic infrastructure and translations for the string "Today" used by the Calendar control in 14 languages. With the Toolkit Patching Utility in place we are receiving help from the community in translating the rest of the strings used by the Toolkit . We have added support for two new languages, Czech and Dutch bringing our language count to 16 ! We have also received a patch that completed the Russian resources...(read more)

Toolkit: New and improved!

2007-06-07T03:06:00Z

The latest version of the Toolkit is out. Try it out now. What's so great about this release? This release is particularly special since we had very active Toolkit contributor participation. We also got contributions in the form of patches that allowed us to fix issues which we would not have considered otherwise due to lack of resources. More than 40 bugs out of a hundred odd fixed in this release were handled by the Toolkit contributors! I will let the numbers speak for themselves. What's new?...(read more)

Cascading AutoComplete

2007-05-17T10:52:00Z

We have received a lot of feedback from users about not being able to pass additional information to the AutoComplete webservice which limits their usage of the extender. We decided to absorb that input and add support to all extenders that issue XmlHttpRequests the option of passing in data above and beyond what is allowed by the standard webservice parameters, something that closely resembles the DynamicPopulate style support, to provide to flexible context. With this support in , you will be able...(read more)

Using UpdatePanels with ModalPopups

2007-05-04T02:13:00Z

One of the most frequently asked questions on the Toolkit forums and at MIX after Shawn's demo was how to get UpdatePanels to work right with ModalPopups. The trick is to understand that the ModalPopup extender attaches itself to more than just the TargetControl and PopupControl. If you include the OK and Cancel buttons inside the ModalPopup Panel in an UpdatePanel, make sure you include the extender declaration in it as well. If you do not, once a postback occurs the extender will not reinitialize the handlers and you will get null references. Also, if buttons inside the ModalPopup Panel are set to be OK and Cancel buttons on the ModalPopup Extender, then their sole purpose is to close the Popup Panel and run their respective scripts if any have been set. They will not perform postbacks or execute any other client side handlers since the ModalPopup prevents the event from propagating up.

I have attached a sample page that demonstrates three simple scenarios with ModalPopups and UpdatePanels.

ModalPopup with an UpdatePanel inside its Popup Panel: Make sure that the OK and Cancel buttons are not inside the UpdatePanel otherwise the handlers will be rendered useless on postback.
UpdatePanel that contains a ModalPopup Extender and its Popup Panel: Clicking OK or Cancel still does not cause the postback since those buttons are tied to client side handlers. Clicking on any other control will cause the server side handlers to kick in. Since the extender declaration is inside the UpdatePanel, the asynchronous postback causes the ModalPopupBehavior to be reinitialized correctly and any client side handlers are setup again when the request is completed. So if you would like to postback every time the user clicks OK or Cancel, just don't set those properties on the extender. The Modal Popup Panel closes on postback as desired since the entire popup is inside an UpdatePanel.
What if that Popup Panel in # (2) contains an UpdatePanel: Specify the triggers that will cause the outer panel to update and allow the UpdatePanel inside the ModalPopup to operate on its own terms. This time the ModalPopup Panel does not close on postback triggered from within it because the trigger for the outer panel is specifically set to be a separate button.

It is a good idea to design the page without UpdatePanels in mind. When writing the page place UpdatePanels when the rest is done. Once you have the page setup, determine locations in your page that need to be asynchronously updated and the controls that should act as triggers to perform that operation and then appropriately place UpdatePanels with the correct triggers and UpdateMode property set. With extenders it is important that you take into consideration not just the controls targetted by the extender but any others which it hooks into to provide additional functionality.

This post should evolve as I get more feedback and I will update the sample accordingly as well. I hope this helps.

Silverlight at the end of the tunnel

2007-05-04T00:22:00Z

I was in Las Vegas this week attending the MIX' 07 conference along with the rest of the Toolkit team. My team mates, David Anson and Ted Glaza worked on the keynote demo that Scott Guthrie presented. The demo was written in managed code using the alpha version of the Silverlight platform that Microsoft showcased at MIX. It is a cool airline application composed of three core controls, Calendar, FlightPicker and Map. The source code is available for download from David's blog.

Silverlight will be a big leap in terms of the way we perceive the web. Essentially, with the managed code support, one no longer needs to be a web developer to write rich and interactive web applications. There is no need to worry about javascript, understand browser differences or css incompatibilities. It is all abstracted away from the developer who can focus on the end scenario without being distracted by these issues. All there is to see is XAML, XAML and more XAML and of course CSharp. I am up for that any day if I can get away from javascript. Why? Static language, with rich compiler support, intellisense, debugging support and a wide array of .NET apis to build on top of - need I say more? Our next project may have a lot more to do with Silverlight. Will it be a Silverlight Control Toolkit? May be. If you have ideas or suggestions around it do send me an email or leave a comment.

Accessibility support in the Toolkit

2007-04-20T08:33:00Z

Accessibility has long been one of the most neglected aspects in the software development process. Those who do take it up, do so because they wish to secure a customer who has government compliance clauses. Getting resources assigned for accessibility work is a tough job with few takers. We, the Toolkit team, think it is a fulfilling and worthy task and do not want to deprive users with disabilities of the Toolkit's coolness!

Although accessibility on the client has been pretty stable in terms of Assistive Technologies(AT) and platform support, web accessibility remains in its nascent stages with the web redefining itself. W3C is working on the WCAG 2.0 draft which will be the second attempt to flesh out web accessibility guidelines in the wake of the AJAX movement. Its charter is to deliver a web accessibility standard that will guide web developers to author semantically correct web sites which will communicate better with AT devices.

We eagerly await the industry standard that both web technologies and AT devices will comply with. However, till then the Toolkit controls need to be as accessible as possible to everyone, including users with disabilities within the current scope of accessibility guidelines. To achieve that goal we have an Accessibility Plan in place and hope to deliver support one issue at a time. We have already started making efforts to fix issues as we find them and we have a lot more in our Issue Tracker that we would like to take up soon.

So join us in your efforts to make the Toolkit more accessible. We are not Accessibility experts but working on it, so if you have accessibility domain knowledge, we see a potential partnership here! How can you help? Know about issues in Toolkit that could be changed to improve the accessibility experience, send us an email, post it on our forums or simply create a work item.

Some useful links:

Section 508 is the US Law that states that all software should not discriminate against users with disabilities by disallowing them access to features that normal users have and prevent them from making the best use to operate effectively.
European policies are also in place to ensure that the software is accessible to all.
Juicy Studios is a site which provides guidelines on authoring accessible websites
Learning the world is very good blog on web standards and accessibility

Toolkit for all!