Gaia Ajax Widgets for ASP.NET 2.0 and Mono

November 17th, 2007 Arsen Posted in Patterns - .NET |

Gaia Ajax Widgets is the first Ajax library to not re-render HTML in update divs

• Have most of the ASP.NET controls wrapped in derived controls
• Also have some more advanced Ajax controls like AutoCompleter, Menu and Window
• Compatible with both normal ASP.NET and ASP.NET Ajax
• No JavaScript required to use
• 100% WYSIWYG and RAD
• Free to download (registering required)
• Gaia Ajax Widgets is Open Source
• Supported browsers are; FireFox, IE and Opera
• 100% Mono compatible
• Follows the complete ASP.NET Page syclus (in server code it will “appear” to be a normal postback)
• Does not re-render the HTML in update divs

The last point is crucial in the design of Gaia Ajax Widgets since it’s the basis for creating stateful controls which are also dynamically changeable. This is in most other Ajax framework an “either nor” option since mostly in other frameworks you’ll have to choose if you want your widget to be updateable in Ajax Callbacks or if it should be possible to keep state. Gaia Ajax Widgets does not re-render HTML on return of your Ajax Request and therefor you can attach events to the DHTML controls on the client without being afraid of your event listeners being dropped when the server returns a “new set” of HTML and replaces your existing control with its attached events. This is crucial in constructing things like AutoCompleters where you want to be able to show the auto completion data from an event in your page and still be able to manipulate properties in other controls in that very same event handler etc…