Currently, I have a ASP.net 3.5 web application for which I currently am working on the UI.I have been out of touch of doing web ui's for a while.
When i last did UI related work (way back in 2007), i used the Ajax Control Toolkit - specially the extenders like MaskedEdit Extender etc for implementing a lot of the UI functionality i.e restricting the user from entering incorrect data / formatting etc.
Question 1:-
Is there a newer / better / easier way of implementing the functionality similar to the extenders provided by AjaxToolkit that someone would recommend?
Question 2
Also, my current application needs to support multiple cultures in terms of the number / date formatting. In my experience with Ajax extenders, for eg in MaskedEditExtender, I would have to specify the Mask explicitly which defeats the whole purpose of it being able to switch formats depending on the currently selected culture. Is anyone aware of the latest / greatest way in terms of controls etc that I can achieve this?
Note: I am open to lightweight 3rd party controls that could help me do this but would prefer not to touch heavycontrols like infragistics / telerik kinds mainly due to their learning curve / cost.
I currently use Devexpress in the office and at home i use jQuery. Microsoft suggest instead of using the AJAX Toolkit that you use jQuery. This seems to be the best way to go.
jQuery Toolkit for ASP.net is supposed to be quite easy but i find that jQuery UI does everything that you need it to do and doesn't have too much of a learning curve. Using jQuery is much more straightforward than neat javascript and is a useful skill in today's climate.
A combination of:
web services (asmx or mvc)
jQuery ajax
jQuery UI
Along with the plethora of jQuery plug-ins available would be my recommendation for both light weight, and a good abundance of supporting help as well as plug-ins and very active development.
IF you need a bit more you should look a the http://www.obout.com/ controls as an option.
Related
I've been researching the use of Bootstrap for my next project. The controls that it implements seem to be very similar to those in the AJAX Toolkit. I was then wondering if this was a new evolutionary path that I must consider or just a branch in terms of using script-based programming or more traditional .NET/C#/JavaScript based approach.
Will AJAX still be viable for web development?
If I use a non-MVC/ASP.Net approach, should I use Bootstrap or AJAX Controls?
Thanks in advance for any insight you can give me.
Ajax is very viable for web development. It is built into frameworks like jQuery. It may be confusing though because you see the term used in things like the asp.net ajax control toolkit, which do a lot of interesting things client-side. A lot of those client-side things like the modal popup exist in other scripting libraries like jQuery UI and Bootstrap.
Separate the real purpose of AJAX which is to perform asynchronous communication with the server and ignore the other items that get confused with AJAX (like the aforementioned AJAX control toolkit).
Bootstrap is a responsive design framework. It has lots of built-in components such as the modal, tab, alert, etc.. Don't confuse these with AJAX either, they're just great client-side functions. The AJAX control toolkit also has similar features, but few parts have much to do with true AJAX other than the fact they make use of scripting features introduced in 2008 with the System.Web.Extensions namespace. Things like the $find() method.
Look at Bootstrap to focus on the UI, it's presentation, and some interaction components. Use the parts that make sense to you. If you have an Ajax Control Toolkit modal that works in your application just fine, you don't need to replace it with the Bootstrap modal as you may need to do other things to get the two to behave the same. Bootstrap is an awesome framework for client-side development, and can easily work with ASP.Net, though it's easier to do with MVC simply because of the design principles of MVC versus Webforms.
I come from a Powerbuilder background and our company made a shift to .NET.
We discuss about what platform to use. .NET, Web, C#, Entity Framework for the moment but we need a "client" component solution...something a bit RAD (if there is such in web development)
We know very little apbout javascript, json etc
Having that in mind, which platform do you think is easier to develop with, KendoUI or DevExpress?
I have only seen Kendo
(we want the client thing...the whole server components matter made us stay in PB for so long)
Waiting your advices! Thanx
I may be biased here as i work for Telerik as an evangelist. Having said that i am a hard core programmer myself so this is based on my experience.
I was more of a windows platform guy for more than 5 years now and my work made me shift to this. But i had started out as a web guy almost 10 years ago. When I started to look at web as building myself back on the web around couple of years ago, I had to start understanding JQuery as that has become the default JS in my opinion. So when kendo came out - it was as if Kendo was complimenting JQuery. No new syntax or no new learning curve for me. Of course being a framework it has its own methods, properties and events that's it but no new language.
Another biggest factor with kendo is - it is completely HTML5 based and completely client side UI framework. It is one package you need for everything instead of 100s of plugins you would normally do.
Kendo UI is from Telerik - so there is a clear cut release cycles and a world class support backing it.
Here is a live example of how kendo ui can be used to build real world apps
http://www.kendouimusicstore.com/
Music Store is a famous example from Microsoft on ASP.NET MVC. The same example has been re done with Kendo UI powering the UI and WebAPIs in the backend.
Hope this provides you with some insights to your decision making.
Based on my experience, the DevExpress DXTREME offers the framework and corresponding wizards that allow you to create prototypes of the multi-channel applications (for iOS and Android) quickly.
At the same time, the Kendo UI provides more "clear" access to the used widgets' JavaScript code. But it may require additional effort with the JavaScript.
In any case, I belive you can decide only once you try to build something using both of them. It is still up to you. Good luck!
While looking for a 3rd party web UI controls library, I need to know whether I should go for a script based solution like ExtJS,DHTMLX, YUI, etc or a server side one like telerik or DevExpress? Tell me with these areas in view:
1- control
2- performance
3- programmatic manipulation
4- ease of development
5- learning curve
in performance i think java-script Based are faster and more user-friendly because of the ability to dynamically change during the run time
while server base GUI's are static like a stone
i don't know in other views
It really depends on what you need.
For MVC3 Web apps I would recommend client side libraries.
jQuery UI is small and fast, very popular so community is strong.
Downside is it has relatively small number of widgets.
If you need greater number of widgets then use something as ExtJS or YUI but that comes with a price of size and performance.
I think best approach is to check out websites of jQuery UI and YUI and see which widgets do you really need.
If jQuery UI satisfies you, then go for jQuery UI.
I'm looking for a set of Javascript based UI components for a web app I'm building and have found that many of the best looking web apps were built with the Capuccino framework; see http://www.getflow.com/, http://www.picsengine.com/home/ and http://timetableapp.com/ for examples.
However, I'm not a Cocoa developer and have no interest in learning Objective-J. Ideally, I'd find a set of components that provide the visual end result of Capuccino apps without the underlying weight of the framework.
I have seen the Aristo jQuery UI them (http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/482577430/introducing-aristo-a-jquery-ui-theme), but jQuery UI just doesn't seem to have the depth of components available in Capuccino.
I realize this may be a long shot, but I figured it can't hurt to ask. :)
Thanks.
As another option, there is jQuery UI: nice if you are already familiar with jQuery, with the plus side of not being too heavyweight, but may not have all the components you need pre-defined. A nice thing is that it encourages to write the HTML in a way that degrades gracefully when your application in older browsers.
Maybe sproutcore is an alternative for you, although it requires you to hand-code everything in javascript from scratch. It offers most basic components and is easily adjustable to your personal design goals. Sproutcore is used in Apples Mobile Me and in some other big projects.
Another possibility might by vaadin which offers a rich set of prebuild controls and is based on Googles GWT javascript compiler. But it only makes sense if you are developing in a java environment.
I already know Asp.net and C#. I want to build web site, and I need to choose between learning Silverlight or learning Ajax.
The site will be (visual) with nice tables and a little graphics, and with hard work with db.
My question is what is the recommended way for me, and the reasons.
Thank u and sorry for my English.
Microsoft's current position would indicate that you should go with Asp.Net + HTML + CSS + jQuery (I would use MVC as it gives you much better control as to what gets rendered in the page, but that's just a recommendation).
http://mashable.com/2010/10/29/microsoft-silverlgiht-html/
Even if we ignore all the news regarding this shift from SilverLight to what's commonly being called "HTML5", learning & using jQuery + HTML + CSS has several advantages:
From a personal standpoint, all the knowledge you'll get will be useful for C# and for any other languages you need to use in the future for developing web apps.
Using Silverlight (or flash) you are basically telling search engines to ignore you. Ok, maybe it's not so radical, but you'll have a hard time trying to make your page climb positions in Google & Bing, if you intend to do so.
Silverlight makes you depend on a browser plugin. Your page won't work in any OS or browser that doesn't have the plugin installed.
You'll find much more information and documentation for jQuery + HTML than for Silverlight, as jQuery is used not only with C#, but also with PHP, Java...
As a benefit of using Silverlight, however, you will gain the ability to stream DRM'd content (it's actually Silverlight's and Flash's main strength right now). How useful that will be to you, I don't know.
The question promotes somewhat subjective answers, so please understand that the answers will vary from person to person.
I would prefer AJAX in this instance. If you need to do a lot of animation then silverlight is probably your best bet. However, if you're looking just to display tabular data (with some graphics), the most commonly used approach (by my observation) is to use AJAX to populate tabular data.
The most common use I see for Silverlight these days is media streaming and proof of concepts.