I’m happy to announce
the release of
the September 2011 Ajax Control Toolkit. This release has several important new features including: Date ranges – When using
the Calendar extender, you can specify a start and end date and a user can pick only those dates which fall within
the specified range. This was
the fourth top-voted feature request for
the Ajax Control Toolkit at CodePlex. Twitter Control – You can use
the new Twitter control to display recent tweets associated with a particular Twitter user or tweets which match a search query. Gravatar Control – You can use
the new Gravatar control to display a unique image for each user of your website. Users can upload custom images to
the Gravatar.com website or
the Gravatar control can display a unique, auto-generated, image for a user. You can download this release this very minute by visiting CodePlex: http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com Alternatively, you can execute
the following command from
the Visual Studio NuGet console: Improvements to
the Ajax Control Toolkit Calendar Control
The Ajax Control Toolkit Calendar extender control is one of
the most heavily used controls from
the Ajax Control Toolkit.
The developers on
the Superexpert team spent
the last sprint focusing on improving this control. There are three important changes that we made to
the Calendar control: we added support for date ranges, we added support for highlighting today’s date, and we made fixes to several bugs related to time zones and daylight savings. Using Calendar Date Ranges One of
the top-voted feature requests for
the Ajax Control Toolkit was a request to add support for date ranges to
the Calendar control (this was
the fourth most voted feature request at CodePlex). With
the latest release of
the Ajax Control Toolkit,
the Calendar extender now supports date ranges. For example,
the following page illustrates how you can create a popup calendar which allows a user only to pick dates between March 2, 2009 and May 16, 2009. <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CalendarDateRange.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.CalendarDateRange" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %>
<html>
<head runat="server">
<title>Calendar Date Range</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<asp:ToolkitScriptManager
ID="tsm"
runat="server" />
<asp:TextBox
ID="txtHotelReservationDate"
runat="server" />
<asp:CalendarExtender
ID="Calendar1"
TargetControlID="txtHotelReservationDate"
StartDate="3/2/2009"
EndDate="5/16/2009"
SelectedDate="3/2/2009"
runat="server" />
</form>
</body>
</html>
This page contains three controls: an Ajax Control Toolkit ToolkitScriptManager control, a standard ASP.NET TextBox control, and an Ajax Control Toolkit CalendarExtender control. Notice that
the Calendar control includes StartDate and EndDate properties which restrict
the range of valid dates.
The Calendar control shows days, months, and years outside of
the valid range as struck out. You cannot select days, months, or years which fall outside of
the range.
The following video illustrates interacting with
the new date range feature:
If you want to experiment with a live version of
the Ajax Control Toolkit Calendar extender control then you can visit
the Calendar Sample Page at
the Ajax Control Toolkit Sample Site.
Highlighted Today’s Date
Another highly requested feature for
the Calendar control was support for highlighting today’s date.
The Calendar control now highlights
the user’s current date regardless of
the user’s time zone.
Fixes to Time Zone and Daylight Savings Time Bugs
We fixed several significant Calendar extender bugs related to time zones and daylight savings time. For example, previously, when you set
the Calendar control’s SelectedDate property to
the value 1/1/2007 then
the selected data would appear as 12/31/2006 or 1/1/2007 or 1/2/2007 depending on
the server time zone.
For example, if your server time zone was set to Samoa (UTC-11:00), then setting SelectedDate=”1/1/2007” would result in “12/31/2006” being selected in
the Calendar. Users of
the Calendar extender control found this behavior confusing.
After careful consideration, we decided to change
the Calendar extender so that it interprets all dates as UTC dates. In other words, if you set StartDate=”1/1/2007” then
the Calendar extender parses
the date as 1/1/2007 UTC instead of parsing
the date according to
the server time zone.
By interpreting all dates as UTC dates, we avoid all of
the reported issues with
the SelectedDate property showing
the wrong date. Furthermore, when you set
the StartDate and EndDate properties, you know that
the same StartDate and EndDate will be selected regardless of
the time zone associated with
the server or associated with
the browser.
The date 1/1/2007 will always be
the date 1/1/2007.
The New Twitter Control
This release of
the Ajax Control Toolkit introduces a new twitter control. You can use
the Twitter control to display recent tweets associated with a particular twitter user. You also can use this control to show
the results of a twitter search.
The following page illustrates how you can use
the Twitter control to display recent tweets made by Scott Hanselman:
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="TwitterProfile.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.TwitterProfile" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %>
<html >
<head runat="server">
<title>Twitter Profile</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<asp:ToolkitScriptManager
ID="tsm"
runat="server" />
<asp:Twitter
ID="Twitter1"
ScreenName="shanselman"
runat="server" />
</form>
</body>
</html>
This page includes two Ajax Control Toolkit controls:
the ToolkitScriptManager control and
the Twitter control.
The Twitter control is set to display tweets from Scott Hanselman (shanselman):
You also can use
the Twitter control to display
the results of a search query. For example,
the following page displays all recent tweets related to
the Ajax Control Toolkit:
Twitter limits
the number of times that you can interact with their API in an hour. Twitter recommends that you cache results on
the server (https://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting). By default,
the Twitter control caches results on
the server for a duration of 5 minutes. You can modify
the cache duration by assigning a value (in seconds) to
the Twitter control's CacheDuration property.
The Twitter control wraps a standard ASP.NET ListView control. You can customize
the appearance of
the Twitter control by modifying its LayoutTemplate, StatusTemplate, AlternatingStatusTemplate, and EmptyDataTemplate.
To learn more about
the new Twitter control, visit
the live Twitter Sample Page.
The New Gravatar Control
The September 2011 release of
the Ajax Control Toolkit also includes a new Gravatar control. This control makes it easy to display a unique image for each user of your website.
A Gravatar is associated with an email address. You can visit Gravatar.com and upload an image and associate
the image with your email address. That way, every website which uses Gravatars (such as
the www.ASP.NET website) will display your image next to your name.
For example, I visited
the Gravatar.com website and associated an image of a Koala Bear with
the email address
[email protected].
The following page illustrates how you can use
the Gravatar control to display
the Gravatar image associated with
the [email protected] email address:
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="GravatarDemo.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.GravatarDemo" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head id="Head1" runat="server">
<title>Gravatar Demo</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<asp:ToolkitScriptManager
ID="tsm"
runat="server" />
<asp:Gravatar
ID="Gravatar1"
Email="
[email protected]"
runat="server" />
</form>
</body>
</html>
The page above simply displays
the Gravatar image associated with
the [email protected] email address:
If a user has not uploaded an image to Gravatar.com then you can auto-generate a unique image for
the user from
the user email address.
The Gravatar control supports four types of auto-generated images:
Identicon -- A different geometric pattern is generated for each unrecognized email.
MonsterId -- A different image of a monster is generated for each unrecognized email.
Wavatar -- A different image of a face is generated for each unrecognized email.
Retro -- A different 8-bit arcade-style face is generated for each unrecognized email.
For example, there is no Gravatar image associated with
the email address
[email protected].
The following page displays an auto-generated MonsterId for this email address:
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="GravatarMonster.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.GravatarMonster" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head id="Head1" runat="server">
<title>Gravatar Monster</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<asp:ToolkitScriptManager
ID="tsm"
runat="server" />
<asp:Gravatar
ID="Gravatar1"
Email="
[email protected]"
DefaultImageBehavior="MonsterId"
runat="server" />
</form>
</body>
</html>
The page above generates
the following image automatically from
the supplied email address:
To learn more about
the properties of
the new Gravatar control, visit
the live Gravatar Sample Page.
ASP.NET Connections Talk on
the Ajax Control Toolkit
If you are interested in learning more about
the changes that we are making to
the Ajax Control Toolkit then please come to my talk on
the Ajax Control Toolkit at
the upcoming ASP.NET Connections conference. In
the talk, I will present a summary of
the changes that we have made to
the Ajax Control Toolkit over
the last several months and discuss our
future plans.
Do you have ideas for new Ajax Control Toolkit controls? Ideas for improving
the toolkit? Come to my talk – I would love to hear from you.
You can register for
the ASP.NET Connections conference by visiting
the following website:
Register for ASP.NET Connections
Summary
The previous release of
the Ajax Control Toolkit –
the July 2011 Release – has had over 100,000 downloads. That is a huge number of developers who are working with
the Ajax Control Toolkit. We are really excited about
the new features which we added to
the Ajax Control Toolkit in
the latest September sprint. We hope that you find
the updated Calender control,
the new Twitter control, and
the new Gravatar control valuable when building your ASP.NET Web Forms applications.
