Now that Web.UI 2008.2 is officially out the door, I can take some time to sit back and reflect on what's been done. There are some great new controls, as usual, and major enhancements to our Grid control. I'm particularly excited about that last part, as I've felt for a long time that some of the limitations with its grouping functionality needed to be addressed. With this release, we took the time to really re-think this aspect of the control, and instead of merely patching on addi...

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Since the introduction of the WebService running mode in ComponentArt Grid, and related functionality (like the client-side load method), we have seen this approach rapidly gain popularity and, naturally, produce demands for more features and more versatility. Versatility is key when it comes to UI controls, so we have been spending some time improving WebService mode in this respect. As of Web.UI 2008.2 SP2 (build 2008.2.1180) Grid has a number of new features. WebServiceConfigMethod In additio...

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Web.UI vNext (preview build included in attached project packages) will include, among other things, a new feature of the CallBack control which will allow it to become extremely useful for integrating AJAX functionality in web applications build on Microsoft’s new ASP.NET MVC framework. About Microsoft ASP.NET MVC A few months ago, Microsoft announced a new, alternative framework for ASP.NET applications built around the model-view-controller architecture pattern. Scott Guthrie blogged ab...

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In my previous post , I talked about the web service functionality that's common to all ComponentArt navigation controls. I focused on common features that are present in many different controls, especially in this case, but this approach was unfair to one control. With its ability to load chunks of data on demand, TreeView is the odd man out, supporting everything that other navigation controls do, but adding its own unique twist. Like the other navigation controls, TreeView has control-lev...

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It's been some time now since we first started introducing client-side integration with ASP.NET AJAX web services into our controls. The first foray was the ability of Grid to bind directly to JavaScript object arrays, allowing it to directly load JSON data returned from a web service, and continue running in client mode ( see demo ). The interest that this generated prompted the next big wave: Grid’s WebService running mode ( see demo ) and web service functionality in all the major n...

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ComponentArt Web.UI 2008.1 includes one new addition to the library of controls: Upload . ComponentArt Upload is a file upload control with all the high-end AJAX and client-centric functionality one should expect from a Web.UI control. The control comes with a custom server-side HTTP module for optimally processing the file upload, and an HTTP handler which provides upload progress information and otherwise enables communication between the module and the control on the client. On the client, pr...

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Two days ago, on Saturday, I attended Toronto Code Camp 2008 , the third such event organized in our fair city. It was my first time at a Code Camp and I had a good time and learned a lot. In addition to attending some very interesting presentations and chatting with people from the ASP.NET community, I got to speak as well! My talk was about how ASP.NET AJAX exposes web services on the client, and how that can be connected with "client-centric" controls, such as those in Web.UI. After...

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A common scenario that our users encounter with the Grid is the need to populate it with different data depending on client-side context – for instance, a dropdown option or a TreeView selection. Very often, this situation is solved by to setting Grid to Server or Client running mode and wrapping it in a CallBack control, and then using the CallBack to send custom parameters back to the server and to refresh the Grid. This has worked well for many, but is not without its limitations, mostl...

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Previously, I have written about Grid’s new WebService running mode, which allows Grid to communicate with an ASP.NET AJAX web service directly from the client, and do all its data loading through it, including paging, sorting, filtering, etc. This powerful functionality is also available on ComponentArt navigation controls: TreeView, Menu, NavBar, TabStrip and ToolBar. All of these have the ability to load their data from an ASP.NET AJAX web service. TreeView, furthermore, has the ability...

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Version 2007.2 of ComponentArt Grid includes, among other goodies, an exciting new feature: WebService running mode. We think it should be very useful for a lot of people so, in this post, I want to introduce you to this feature and explain how it works. What is it? Those who have used Grid will be familiar with the notion of a “running mode”. Until this point, Grid could be used in three different modes: Server, Callback and Client. Setting the RunningMode property to one of these d...

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The SpellCheck control, like most others in Web.UI, includes a powerful client-side API. The philosophy behind SpellCheck’s design is that as little as possible should be baked right into the control when it comes to visual interface, and that custom user experiences should be made as easy as possible via a powerful and versatile client-side API. Below are some examples. To check some text and see how many errors there are, we can do the following: var text = "This is some text with s...

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Version 2007.2 of Web.UI brings with it two new controls: Editor and SpellCheck. In this post, I will provide a brief overview of SpellCheck, describing its abilities and the design philosophy behind it. SpellCheck, as its name suggests, is an ASP.NET control used for facilitating spellchecking on a web page. SpellCheck can be used to check the spelling of any textual content on a page, whether in an input field, text area, or any other element. It uses AJAX techniques to communicate efficiently...

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As part of an overall effort to optimize HTTP-related performance of Web.UI, version 2007.2 includes a new mechanism for reducing the overhead of client script deployment. Since the script files themselves are of manageable size, and drastically benefit from compression in many cases, the biggest overhead comes from HTTP round-trips. Each Web.UI control typically depends on anywhere from one or two to several script files, so the number of separate requests can affect the load times in a web app...

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Now that we got 2007.1 out the door, we can finally take some time to reflect on what we’ve done, and talk to you guys and gals out there about what’s new and notable in the release. It certainly feels good to be writing in a natural language for a change. Since one blog post would hardly suffice for discussing all the new controls and cool new features, for now I’ll focus on only one particular new feature that I think a lot of you will be excited about: client-side binding to...

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With the growing proliferation of Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX, we are often asked by customers whether our CallBack control is intended as a replacement for UpdatePanel, or alternatively, whether UpdatePanel makes the CallBack control obsolete. To address these questions, I feel I should try to clear things up a bit. CallBacks are simply different from UpdatePanels, and the two are not pitted against each other in any way (hence the question mark in the title of this entry). They are simply two...

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