Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Installation Guide to ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX 1.0 Framework

AJAX (Asynchronous Java Script And XML) is a new web development technology which extends ASP.NET and it offers interactive user interface benefits of Asynchronous programming model that is familiar to ASP.NET developers.

In general, problems that ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 resolved are the reduction in the round trips that web applications do while processing requests. As round trips are reduced, the speed has also increased in terms of less data being transferred over the network, and also increases response factor of a web based application. As these are the basic problems user experiences while suffering over the internet AJAX has the solution to it with the help of its framework which includes Java Script ad XML.

To install this framework that we have talked about yet, what ASP.NET developers need is the installation of Microsoft .Net Framework Version 2.0, operating system Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP or Windows Vista. As users already have Microsoft .Net Framework already installed on their machines, any latest browser and specially Internet Explorer version 5.01 or later is required.
Helping software like Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Web Developer Express Edition will increase the efficiency of the developers while developing AJAX.NET enabled applications.

The framework can be downloaded from Microsoft ASP.Net official web site www.asp.net. As of this writing Version 1.0 is available to be downloaded.

This installation guide will assume that the installer machine is running Visual Studio 2005.

The 1.4 MB ASPAJAXExtSetup.msi once downloaded can be initiated by double clicking the setup file.

Simple Wizard based installation setup will guide its installer to successfully complete the installation process. User is asked to agree EULA and with simple Next and Finish button, installation of this package is completed. It is recommended to read Release Notes.

First change you will observe after successful completion of the installation process is the creation of Microsoft ASP.Net folder in Program Files folder in the drive where your operating system is installed. You will find many files in this folder, but web.config file is of great importance (more on this in articles to come).
Now when you open your Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, to create web based applications, a new template ASP.NET AJAX-ENABLED Web Site is provided to help develop AJAX.Net based web applications. Not only this but a new tab also added in your Toolbox named AJAX Extensions.

Welcome to the new world of AJAX enabled applications and now you are ready to go and develop applications which are more interactive, more responsive and require limited processing on the server.

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