Brian Mains post an article in which he reviews the client portion of the ASP.NET AJAX framework. He writes:

«The ASP.NET AJAX framework, along with the AJAX Control Toolkit that adds additional controls, extenders, and other client and server objects, provides a new unique way to develop .NET controls. It leverages the existing structures in JavaScript to create a wide array of add-ons that make developing JavaScript code easier than what it was.

In this article, I plan to review some of the new features available in the JavaScript language that Microsoft added in. I should say now that the additions are not new coding conventions to JavaScript. Rather; all of the approaches utilize all of the existing development structures available in the JavaScript language. The client library works within these constructs to make additional coding styles available. Let’s first look at the available constructs.

One important note to the reader: the ASP.NET AJAX framework exists in both a server and client form. In this article, I’m mentioning the client form mostly, which I’ll refer to as the ASP.NET AJAX client library, client library, or JavaScript library.»

Source: DotNetSlackers.com.

Bertrand le Roy announce first preview for the new Ajax features in ASP.NET with following features:

• Client-side template rendering

• Declarative instantiation of behaviors and controls

• DataView control

• Markup extensions

• Bindings

Source: Bertrand le Roy's blog.

Dave Ward reports that his project called PostBack Ritalin was significantly updated. He writes:

«After a long beta period, PostBack Ritalin v0.10 is finally ready for release. This is absolutely the best version yet. Many edge case issues have been resolved, and the code is leaner and more efficient than ever before.

Changes include:

• Complete rewrite of the JavaScript component of the control. Instead of global variables and functions, PostBack Ritalin is now a proper JavaScript object. This significantly minimizes its namespace impact on the DOM.

• JavaScript embed is now minified.

• By popular demand, added support for disabling LinkButtons.

• Added optional image pre-loading for WaitImages. Previously, disabled ImageButtons could take a bit too long to show their disabled image the first time, due to HTTP delay. Enabling pre-loading will cause the browser to pre-fetch and cache the disabled images, resulting in instant feedback for the disabled state.

• Several bug fixes, thanks to your invaluable feedback.»

Source Encosia.

Scott Mitchell post one more intresing article about building the dynamic user interfaces with ASP.NET AJAX. Here's the short list of topics disscussed in this article:

• Providing Visual Feedback During a Partial Page Postback

• Adding and Configuring an UpdateProgress Control

• A More "Real-World" Example of Using the UpdateProgress Control

• Looking Forward.

Source: 4Guys from Rolla.

Dave Ward write an article in whi he explains dangerous drawbacks inherent to UpdatePanel based navigation. He writes the followings:

«Perhaps due to its ubiquitous presence in web based email services, implementing asynchronous site navigation is frequently a design requirement when building AJAX based sites. Unfortunately, the also ubiquitous UpdatePanel is chosen to accomplish this far too often.

I’d like to take a moment to strongly recommend against doing that.

I’m going to explain what I believe are the three most dangerous drawbacks inherent to UpdatePanel based navigation: Performance degradation, usability concerns, and lack of maintainability.

Note: I would add SEO concerns to the list of drawbacks, but I’m going to assume that anyone who cares about SEO knows better than to use an UpdatePanel for content they wish to be indexed.»

You can read the full version of article on the Encosia site.

Bertran le Roy writes an intresting article about enhancing the UpdatePanel Ajax element. He writes:
"UpdatePanel is a great way to add Ajax features to an ASP.NET application at a minimal cost. Because it's based on regular postbacks, it also degrades gracefully when JavaScript is not present. But one thing it doesn't do well out of the box - and this is actually the case for any asynchronous update to the DOM - is informing screen readers that new content is present. This article and the accompanying code show how to work around that problem and give assistive technology users access to the benefits of Ajax. "

You can find the full version of this article and download the source code on the dotnetSlackers.com site.

There is a new tutorial about using the new controls for data paging in ASP.NET 3.5 posted on a 4 Guys From Rolla site. Here's the short list of topic covered in this tutorial:

• Paging Basics

• Default Paging vs. Custom Paging

• Creating the DataPager and Defining its DataPagerFields

• Creating a Custom Paging Interface with the TemplatedPagerField

There is an intrestIng article about uploading the large files on site with the ASP..NET in Jon Galloway blog. The author reviewed a lot of metyhods oof building such feature on a web site from a simplest solutions with a singles message to a beautiful RIA upload component. Also thereis a some information about how the IIS7 handle the file uploading. You can read the full version of this post in Jon Galloway Blog.

Last month we wrote about new project from the Microsoft Live Labs - Microsoft Volta.Microsoft Live Labs Volta is Microsoft's emerging toolset that enables developers to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar .NET techniques and patterns. Tanzim Saqib has posted an article on DotNetSlackers site in which he telling about creating simple Volta control — a Flickr Widget.

The Custom Web-Parts is one of the most intresting ASP.NET features. You can learn the basics of this feature from the new article posted on the AjaxWorld Magazine. This article contains walk-through example of web application built with custom web- parts. Also there is a short review of various Microsoft technologies base on the web parts.

Source: AJAX World Magazine.

One of the most common problems in AJAX technology is a problem with browser history objectm Many AJAX libraries trying to solve.In the article posted by Dino Esposito on  dotnetslackers.com author describing one of the main feature of new ASP.NET Extensions 3.5 - the native support for history points and back/forward browser navigation.

Source: dotnetslackers.com

Scott Guthrie has posted the next article in th series about new MVC framework for ASP.NET. In this chapter he describes the routing architecture and show how to use it in web applications.

This article covers th following topics:

• What does the ASP.NET MVC URL Routing System do?

• Default ASP.NET MVC URL Routing Rules

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Scott Gu has posted very detailed tutorial Tip/Trick: Creating Packaged ASP.NET Setup Programs with VS 2005
With this article you can simply create setup project and deploy your application.

This includes the source to the server-side ASP.NET integration (including the UpdatePanel, UpdateProgress, and ScriptManager controls, as well as the source to the Network Serialization code).

The client-side ASP.NET AJAX JavaScript library (which we also call the "Microsoft AJAX Library") is being released under the Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL). This grants developers the right to freely customize/modify the library, as well as to redistribute the derivative versions of the JavaScript library for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 delivers a rich client-side AJAX library that provides cross platform, cross browser support for a core JavaScript type-system, JSON-based network serialization stack, JavaScript component/control model, as well as common client JavaScript helper classes. ASP.NET AJAX also delivers a rich server-side library that integrates AJAX functionality within ASP.NET, and enables developers to easily AJAX-enable existing ASP.NET 2.0 sites with minimal effort.

ASP.NET AJAX is available for free, and can be used with ASP.NET 2.0 and VS 2005. It is a fully supported Microsoft product, and is backed by a standard 10 year Microsoft support license (with Microsoft Product Support available via phone 24 hours a day x 7 days a week).

ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit

In addition to the fully-supported ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 release, you can use the more than 30 free ASP.NET AJAX enabled controls available within the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. The control toolkit is a shared-source collaborative project built together by a team containing both Microsoft and non-Microsoft developers (visit the CodePlex Project to learn more, or volunteer to contribute). All source for the controls is provided completely for free (with full re-use and modification rights).

The majority of controls within the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit leverage the "Control Extender" pattern that the core ASP.NET AJAX library introduces, and which delivers a super powerful way to easily enable specific AJAX scenarios on a site with minimal effort.

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Source Release