ASP.NET Ajax vs jQuery

[NetWave]

Hi,

For my next project I'm going to need Ajax, so I'm in about to read some
books on ASP.NET Ajax.

While reading Rick Strahl's blog I stumbled upon jQuery. I've been to the
website and seen some examples, and it sure looks promising.

However, I'm not sure how it relates to ASP.NET Ajax. Do they complement
each other? Or are they concurrent products?

 

[bruce barker]

they are enough different to be complementary, but have a some overlap.
other than webservice (ajax) call support, they are different approachs.

asp.net ajax tries to make javascript and dom programming look like .net
programing and implements a class and event model that looks like the
..net world. it also has the notion of control extenders (behaviors).
these behaviors extend (add ui sugar) to asp.net server controls. most
of the library is framework to build library components.

Jquery is a popular library for javascript developers. it does not try
to change javascript, but uses the notion that the most common
javascript operations on the dom is building collections of objects and
performing operations on them. it also has strong webservice support and
a control plugin model. its also probably easier to understand than
the ms ajax library from the javascript side.

if you are looking at JQuery, you should look at the new MVC library
from asp.net that plays better with JQuery than it does with the MS
ajax library. JQuery understands the MVC REST interface, and MVC doesn't
play with control ids.

if you only know MS form programming, click on designer to get an event
handler and only want a little ajax support stick with webforms and
asp.net ajax.

if you want to do a rich ajax application, understand delegates, unit
testing, factories, and design patterns then I'd recommend MVC and JQuery.

-- bruce (sqlwork.com)

 

[Cowboy \(Gregory A. Beamer\)]

At present, ASP.NET AJAX is a fine library, in and of itself. The ability to
drag and drop things is great. But, there is a caveat. If you intend on
heading to ASP.NET MVC, you have to really kludge things up to use ASP.NET
AJAX. This is at least true in the current CTP ... and may not be in "ber"
when it is released (according to team blogs, it will be released in a month
ending in "ber" - aiming for Septem-ber, but it may be as late as
Decem-ber). There are good tutorials on using JQuery with MVC today.

If you are not using MVC, either option is fine. Overall, I like the speed
of development with ASP.NET AJAX, esp. with the Toolkit added to it. It has
a lot of neat control extenders that you can use to adorn your ASP.NET
Server controls to get some really great effects (accordian, always in place
hover layer, date picker, etc.). You can have them up and running in just a
few minutes after a brief learning exercise.

I am not trying to discourage JQuery, by any means. It is a great library
with a lot of support. There are a couple of books on the market to help you
get up to speed.

Another decent option, which is also open source, is the Yahoo User
Interface Framework (YUI). It has a lot of controls included, and can work
in a variety of languages and paradigms, as it is pure client side goodness.

Now, one thing you should realize, is the more you put on the client, the
more likelihood you will get into a corner you can unpaint yourself from.
Some client side libs clash with each other. This is less likely with OO
style JavaScript libraries, of course, but there is a danger you will use
more than one library and end up butting heads. The answer here is to choose
and stick with it.

Have fun!

 

[NetWave]

At present, ASP.NET AJAX is a fine library, in and of itself. The ability
to (snip)

Thank you both!

I sure appreciate the time you took for these clear answers regarding my
question.