AJAX Tutorial

AJAX = Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.

AJAX is not a new programming language, but a new way to use existing
standards.
AJAX is the art of exchanging data with a server, and updating parts of a web
page - without reloading the whole page.

How AJAX Works


The controls provided by ASP.NET for having AJAX functionality are:
1. ScriptManager
2. ScriptManagerProxy
3. UpdatePanel
4. UpdateProgress
5. Timer



ScriptManager
The ScriptManager control is a non-visual component on the page. This control is
required on each page that needs to have AJAX features implemented on it. The
main functionality of a ScriptManager control is to push Microsoft AJAX
framework code to the client side when the page is being rendered. This
control can be thought of as the agent which will write the JavaScript required on
the client side to facilitate AJAX functionality.There should be only one
ScriptManager control on the page that needs AJAX functionality.

ScriptManagerProxy
Consider a situation where there is a master page and content page and both need
AJAX functinalities functionalities. Since there could be only one ScriptManager on
the page, adding a ScriptManager control in these scenarios will result in
two ScriptManager controls on the page. So to handle such conditions,
the ScriptManagerProxy control can be used. ScriptManagerProxy should be
used on content pages that have master pages containing a ScriptManager
control. It can also be used inside UserControls when the page containing the
UserControl already has the ScriptManager control.

UpdatePanel
This is a container control that contains other ASP.NET controls. This control defines
a region that is capable of making partial page updates. We can add various server
controls inside an UpdatePanel and this controls inside the UpdatePanel will
communicate to the server irrespective of the page's postback.

UpdateProgress
If the operation is time consuming then we can provide the user feedback by using
the UpdateProgress control inside the UpdatePanel. We can add a
simple UpdateProgress control to make the user aware of the fact that some
processing is being done by the page right now.

Timer
There might be some scenarios where we want to update a particular portion of the
page after some time duration irrespective of user action. To achieve this, we can
use the Timer control.