Silverligth

PUBLISHED BY Microsoft Press A Division of Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, Washington 98052-6399 Copyright © 2007 by Dino Esposito All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Control Number: 2007924643 Printed and bound in the UnitedStates of America. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 QWT 2 1 0 9 8 7 Distributed in Canada by H.B. Fenn and Company Ltd. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Microsoft Press books are available through booksellers and distributors worldwide. For further information about international editions, contact your local Microsoft Corporation office or contact Microsoft PressInternational directly at fax (425) 936-7329. Visit our Web site at www.microsoft.com/mspress. Send comments to mspinput@microsoft.com. Microsoft, Microsoft Press, ActiveX, IntelliSense, Internet Explorer, MSDN, MSN, PowerPoint, SQL Server, Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual Studio, Windows, Windows Media, and Windows Vista are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation inthe United States and/or other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, place,or event is intended or should be inferred.

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Contents at a Glance
Part I

ASP.NET AJAX Building Blocks
The AJAX Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 The Microsoft Client Library for AJAX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

1 2
Part II

AddingAJAX Capabilities to a Site
The Pulsing Heart of ASP.NET AJAX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Partial Page Rendering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 The AJAX Control Toolkit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

3 4 5
Part II

Client-Centric Development
Built-inApplication Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Remote Method Calls with ASP.NET AJAX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Building AJAX Applications with ASP.NET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

6 7 8

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Part I

ASP.NET AJAX Building Blocks
The AJAX Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
The Paradigm Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Classic Web Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 AJAX-Based Web Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Role of Rich Browsers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....