I asked a question a few days ago about how to customise the calendar extender of the ajaxcontroltoolkit library and got a response saying I should ditch the control kit for jQuery. I have to say I've heard jQuery being mentioned quite a bit and more importantly I've seen it as a requirement for an increasing number of web development job vacancies.
I do like the ajaxcontroltoolkit with its simplicity and integration with Visual Studio. Does anyone have an opinion on the two of these? I'd love to hear from developers with experience with both these ajax solutions.
-- Jonesy
Now that MS has started devoting develoment budget to improving jquery (dated 16 March 2010) ...
As part of Microsoft’s broad engagement with open source communities, Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie today announced that Microsoft is investing resources to contribute to the development of the jQuery JavaScript Library to help improve the development process of standards-based Web applications. Microsoft will also work to provide better interoperability between ASP.NET and the jQuery JavaScript Library by enhancing ASP.NET so .NET developers can better incorporate jQuery capabilities. In addition, Microsoft will actively promote and distribute versions of the jQuery JavaScript Library by packaging it with popular products such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET MVC 2. As a first step, Microsoft will contribute a templating engine to the jQuery JavaScript Library Team to simplify Web applications.
... I think that this is the way to go for client side UI when working on .Net based web apps.
I think JQuery is the future, but if you have developers with just a control-based skill set, and a looming deadline, then I think judicious use of the AjaxControlToolKit is still acceptable.
AjaxControlToolKit is not really acceptable, like everything linked to webforms (I know i'm hard here but I don't like to loose time using a framework).
It's easy for beginners to do basic stuff, but when you want to do specific stuff you are blocked by the framework, and when you fight against a framework I think it's time to change.
An example : you want to close a modal popup by clicking on the grey background ... have fun.
So go jquery :) Or prototype or whatever