I have a solution that uses Accordian and tab controls, amongst others.
Is it worth swapping these out and use the jQuery controls instead?
What are the benefits? Is it best practice to load one tab at a time with data?
There are obviously benefits to using both, but in my experience if you are using ASP.NET then you are going to find the (I'm assuming you meant Ajax Control Toolkit) the ASP.NET controls better if you have a requirement for data-binding or have a high tendency to utilise your server execution time a lot.
IMO if the current controls meet your requirements then there isn't a breaking reason to switch to the jQuery controls, some ASP.NET server controls that provide Ajax functionality can be quite heavy-weight and cumbersome, but I've found controls like the Accordion to fit my needs perfectly, and wouldn't see a need to switch unless it wasn't flexible enough.
I had to make this swap in some test on my projects, from ASP.NET Ajax controls to jQuery controls, and my only issues was the UpdatePanel's.
ASP.NET take care the UpdatePanel messages (when you make asynchronous calls), but if you going to change it with jQuery you need to take care this updates by yourself - if you use UpdatePanel.
Update.
I agree with the comments for the UpdatePanel. I was working on a project, that had already many upadtePanels, and we just started to change some things to see what and how. If you build it up from the beginning I agree that it's better to avoid UpdatePanel, and do it with jQuery.
Related
Does anyone have, or could point me to, an example of using jQuery to page through an ASP.NET datagrid control?
I would like to page through a large set of data displayed by an ASP.NET DataGrid control however I would like to avoid a page refresh and hence want to use AJAX to get the new sets of data. I would also like to avoid the ASP.NET AJAX toolkit and would like to do it all using jQuery-AJAX. Thank you.
The DataGrid is a server side control that relies on postbacks. jQuery and AJAX are client side technologies. Write a AMSX or WCF service to serve up your data and consume it with jQuery. You can use jQuery templates to make things easier. Or wrap the DataGrid in an UpdatePanel and you will have the poor man's AJAX(sometimes called AJAH).
There may be a jQuery plugin to help with this.
Here's a nice article to get you started:
Easily build powerful client-side AJAX paging, using jQuery
Try using jGrid, it´s free, but there are commercial dotnet implementations available.
It´s quite powerfull,you can do almost everything with it. And loading your data is easy to. But, you have to forget the Idea of aspnet datagrid, unless you will use updatepanel(which is very stable and usefull and has nothing to do wiht asp net ajax toolkit)
Which control is best in terms of performance... multi-view or TabContainer in asp.net ?
According to your description I would probably don't use any of those two controls. I wouldn't go with tabs as you don't really need to be able to switch between them all the time as is seems. The tabs container uses javascript to enable you to change tab on the client side.
About the multiview. I find it bad practice to have that much different logic in the same place and it will probably give you problems later on. In my opinion and experience it's usually better to split that up in different pages and have one for each thing you want to add/modify (you can have the delete at the modify page and/or in the listings). I would recommend to stay away from the multiview control for tasks like this, as I think that having one page to show multiple pages is usually a bad idea.
As far as i know TabContainer isn't a native control in ASP.NET, you could use TabStrip from microsoft.web.ui.webcontrols, but this is limited to Internet Explorer.
So if you have TabContainer from a third party source, use MultiView which is native to asp.net therefore faster. But everything in ASP.NET eventually renders as basic HTML.
I don't know how they render in HTML.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Ajax update panels in ASP.NET application. Is there any alternatives available to avoid the use of Ajax update panel?
Advantages:
Easy to use and configure (Well, I don't know of any other advantages!)
Disadvantages:
See here and here
Now for the best part, the alternatives:
Use jQuery's built in support for Ajax to make GET/POST Ajax calls, it's very simple (simpler than the update panel I would say), and absolutely compatible with most browsers!
An example of using one of the many easy ways jQuery provides for doing Ajax calls:
$('#anotherContainer').load('/Home/RegularAjaxResource');
This would simply call a server resource (RegularAjaxResource in this case) and display it's returned data on an UI element with id anotherContainer
I agree with 7alwagy, except just want to add an important point.
You have to use the UpdatePanel if you want to update/change controls AND still work within the Webforms Postback model of state control, in particular, Viewstate.
For example:
if you explicitly use JS to update the values of a DropDownList control on the client, and you're using the built in Webforms Postback model, the changes you've made won't be picked up.
Essentially, if you're relying on the built in Viewstates, then you have to use the UpdatePanel. You can technically not use it, but you'll really have to fight agaisnt the framework to get things done.
If you're not relying on Postbacks or Viewstates, then you totally don't need the UpdatePanel.
I seriously cannot think of 1 advantage of using updatepanels. They are grief and i found that out the hard way.
They're usable only for the most trivial ajax effects and if you're going to do any data retrieval or database lookups they have a huge problem in scaling up. UpdatePanels are frustrating and not a long time I have shared the updatepanel grief here, here, here and here.
If that's not enough to convince you not to use updatepanel then nothing will.
I agree that update panel is evil and dangerous but in some cases you may want to use it, instead of other options.
The page has few asp.net controls, and less viewstate.
The page html is not too big.
The time is limited to finish the task.
The performance is not the first concern.
Want to keep the sate of controls with postbacks.
Have a lot of server side events you want to fire.
Advantages:
Easy to implement
No need to write javascript in the client
Disadvantages
Uses more bandwidth since all view states are transferred
Element which is supposed to fire the ajax call should be inside the update panel. It is not practically possible all the time
Data outside the update panel is not sent to the server which may be needed for further processing.
In practice developer cannot pre-determine what all data is needed to include in the update panel
I really like the looks of jQuery UI and I'd love to integrate it into my ASP.NET Web Applications. I like the themes and how easy it is to use the widgets. I'm currently using AJAX Control Toolkit controls like the Calendar and ModalPopup. I'm hoping to replace them with the DatePicker and Dialog widgets, but I hear they have issues with UpdatePanels. There are workarounds for these issues, but I wonder, is it worth it?
Which leads into my question(s):
Has anyone had luck using jQuery UI widgets exclusively (instead of AJAX Toolkit Controls) in an ASP.NET Web Application that occasionally uses UpdatePanels?
Are there any best practice resources for getting jQuery UI and UpdatePanels to play nice?
Update:
Based on the answers so far, it seems that the best thing to do is replace UpdatePanels with $.ajax and PageMethods. That should allow me to use jQuery UI without any issues and also improve my AJAX performance.
No, it's not worth it. If the toolkit's calendar and modalpopup extenders are working for you, then just hold on to them.
In future projects, stay away from asp.net ajax and use jQuery exclusively. This way you wont run into any of the updatepanel problems. ASP.NET 4.0 Webforms are going to make using jQuery much easier in the past, because you will have more control of how controls get named when they are rendered to HTML.
We use Microsoft AJAX (only using UpdatePanels) and jQuery and all works great.
Using UpdatePanels makes all UserControls, Postbacks, Viewstate etc work as you would expect with the UI enhancements of jQuery. There are a few things to learn in getting them to work together and until we find an alternative we will continue to do this. We think its worth it.
I would be keen to see how UpdatePanels can be easily replaced with jQuery, but I expect one would need to write additional code for each UpdatePanel replacement, rather than letting asp.net handle things? Are there any articles out there that demonstrate replacing UpdatePanels that contain asp.net controls and UserControls with events etc?
I'm working on a project with a lot of UpdatePanel and jQuery, things just work fine.
Yes, it is a period when you need to learn, to make things work.
If you have a lot of UpdatePanels and you don't want to remove them then this is understandable, and using jQuery is just improving the UI, so it's not going to much worse.
Also jQuery has functionalitys related to AJAX,so you can make elegant client side coding with jQuery which is not related to Design and ui stuff.
I think if you search for jQuery and Ajax on the internet you will find a bunch of good examples, and fine techniques to both technologies together.
PS:
Remenber that UpdatePanel is evil in sort of way when you are using in an inappropriate way.
UpdatePanel is (and generally AJAX) is very customizable, make time for yourself to optimize it
Good luck!
I have looked around on the Internet trying to answer this question. It seems to be kind of complicated though! Seems to come up with all sorts of different topics such as the HtmlHelper and other stuff.
Basically. How can you use custom controls with MVC? In a way that avoids doing anything that is frowned upon.
Also, Is it true that with MVC you have to put some simple logic IN THE PAGE? Isn't that what we should be getting away from?
Update: So, Seems you cannot use controls which depend on anything which MVC does away with, such as the postback events and viewstate. Can you make your own then? A control which does only rendering of course.
Can you use ASP.NET controls? Maybe. If the control does not use ViewState or postback events, it will probably work. For example, the LoginView control works just fine. Telerik supports ASP.NET MVC with some of their controls. On the other hand, if the control needs either ViewState or postbacks, then it just isn't going to work. Controls with data binding aren't ideal, since you typically have to use code behind him up. But they will work, if you add code behind.
On the other hand, controls with no knowledge of ASP.NET (such as the jQuery UI controls) work very well.
No, you don't have to put your logic in the page. You just don't put it on a code behind page, either. Instead, use helper methods.
With respect to the second question, the page is exactly where view logic should go. Any other logic should be in your controllers or models.
I'm not sure what you mean by custom controls. You can have ViewUserControls that are rendered via partials to reuse view code. If you are talking about 3rd part controls built for webforms, it's likely they won't work -- at least for awhile. If you absolutely must have them, though, there are ways to mix MVC with traditional webforms in the same site.