Hello,
The “Prometheus” controls are built entirely on top of the industry-standard ASP.NET AJAX, utilizing its common client-side framework and programming model. This however, does not result in mere AJAX capabilities, which have been present in the RadControls suite for ASP.NET since 2005 but also in new client-side features, which are made possible by the underlying framework. We are also able to optimize performance and simplify deployment with the MS AJAX framework. Additionally, ASP.NET AJAX framework is widely adopted now (it is now integral part of ASP.NET v3.5) and has proved very stable and reliable for the developer community. All these benefits justify our decision to base our controls on ASP.NET AJAX.
As to the problem at hand - in this particular case we are currently investigating a possible workaround that will "trick" the MS Ajax framework into "believing" that docks are where they were when the page was loaded. However, even if this succeeds, it will be a hack of the framework, rather than a correct, reliable solution.
The main problem comes when deciding whether it is good to have RadDock in MS AJAX environment is to answer the question how a dock should interact with the page.
There are many such possibilities - and most of them will work just fine. Thus, providing dock functionality is quite useful. However, the MS AJAX (or any AJAX framework for that matter) implementation relies on the concept of UpdatePanels, and the controls of those UpdatePanels are supposed to stay within the UpdatePanels, and not move somewhere else on the page on the client.
In the particular scenario, it is exactly this that is happening. However, if you consider the simple fact that AJAX is UpdatePanel-centric, and if you consider that RadDock is little more than a moveable panel, then the right way to go would be to wrap all UpdatePanels in RadDock controls. The result would be that RadDock will work fine, and AJAX will work fine. However, if the RadDock objects themselves are expected to be both moveable around the page AND be updatable from their original UpdatePanel - this will not work out of the box (at least for now).
All the best,
Tervel
the Telerik team