RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX The greatest advantage of the Telerik RadAjax tool is that you don't need to make any changes to your existing applications or build new ones in some specific way so that they can be AJAX-enabled. RadAjax for ASP.NET AJAX uses the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX engine to ajax-ify applications, however eliminates the need of using numerous UpdatePanels, triggers, etc.
The patent-pending Click-and-Go™ technology of Telerik RadAjax for ASP.NET AJAX allows you to AJAX-enable any ASP.NET application without making any modification, without writing a single line of code:
Existing applications - in order to AJAX-enable an existing application you need to simply add Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX to your project, then drop the AJAX Manager control at the bottom of your form, define the AJAX relations using a single dialog in Visual Studio and hit F5.
New applications - you don't have to follow any specific guidelines when building an application that is to be AJAX-enabled with Telerik RadAjax. Simply build a regular postback-based application the way you are used to and use the AJAX Manager to AJAX-enable it at the end.
AJAX-enabling without RadAjax for ASP.NET AJAX
When using microsoft ASP.NET AJAX, the standard approach to AJAX-enable am application will require you to place "UpdatePanels" around each area that needs to be updated. This may introduce some challenges with preserving the application's layout (i.e. you need to figure out how to group the various elements).
In simple scenarios like the one above placing UpdatePanels may not be very difficult. But imagine you have a real-life application (e.g. Telerik HelpDesk sample) with dozens of UI controls that need to start working with AJAX. Placing 20+ UpdatePanels and figuring which element should go in the respective panel may be a challenge even for the most advanced developers.
AJAX-enabling a sample application with Telerik RadAjax for ASP.NET AJAX
Telerik RadAjax for ASP.NET AJAX offers a fundamentally different approach to AJAX-enabling existing applications. Basically you need to perform two easy tasks:
Drag and drop the AJAX Manager control on your form
Set the AJAX relations using a single dialog in Visual Studio .Net design mode
As a result, the simple application discussed before will look as shown below - the only modification is the AJAX Manager control placed at the bottom of the form. All controls above it remain intact in their original state.
Once the AJAX Manager is placed on the form you need to use its configuration dialog to define the AJAX relations among the controls on the page, i.e. which controls should initiate AJAX request and which controls should be updated by each respective AJAX request. In our example there are two such relations:
When the calendar control is clicked the e-mail list (datagrid) and the message body (div) need to be respectively updated
When an e-mail message is clicked the message body needs to be updated
Those two relations can be easily set using treeviews with checkboxes in the AJAX Manager dialog:
The other advantage of the AJAX Manager is that it serves as a centralized place for management of the AJAX relations.
See Also