New release of the Ajax Control Toolkit

A new version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is now available for download from the CodePlex website. It contains three new controls:

HtmlEditor HTMLEditor - allows you to easily create and edit HTML content. You can edit in WYSIWYG mode or in HTML source mode. The control exists as a server-side extender but can also be instantiated purely on the client-side with a single line of code. Many thanks to Obout for building this.


ComboBox ComboBox - provides a DropDownList of items, combined with TextBox. Different modes determine the interplay between the text entry and the list of items. this control behaves very much like a Windows combo. Many thanks to Dan Ludwig for building this.


ColorPicker ColorPicker - can be attached to any ASP.NET TextBox control to provide client-side color-picking functionality from a popup. Many thanks to Alexander Turlov for building this.


The ASP.NET website has been updated with new videos and tutorials for these controls.

This new release also includes fixes for over 20 of the most voted bugs in existing AJAX Control Toolkit controls and now features minimized release versions of the script files.

The release can be downloaded as a server dll or as a set of files for use with pure client-side applications.

http://ajaxcontroltoolkit.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=27326

45 Comments

  • Just what I was waiting for. Thanks

  • I got excited when I saw ComboBox but 2 minutes playing with the sample site left me disappointed.
    Seems to work ok in IE 7 but in FF it's broken. Suggest behaviour results in the list not closing when an item is selected. The backspace key sometimes doesn't seem to be passed on to the textbox too meaning users can add more text but not delete what's there.

    Should be good when it's finished but not ready for release yet IMO.

  • HTML Editor......WOW!!!...Thanks...It has been a VERY MAJOR Pain Point...Thank obout...:)

  • Great!! I envy this.
    Does AJAX HTML Editor has Spell Checker also.

  • great.

  • Thanks alot everyone who have worked on this.. Great help..

  • These are three really valuable additions to the control kit.

  • Great!

    The AjaxControlToolkit.dll seems to be corrupted:

    "Could not load file or assembly 'AjaxControlToolkit' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified."


  • We love you guys. Simply cool. Dont know, how much of weight of gone off our backs.

    Thank you

    Thanks a lot.

  • Awesome.... These are super cool controls. Thanks a lot!!

  • The drop down doesn't align and the skins dont work.

    Anyone else experiencing this?

    Having the combobox functionality at our disposal is great but I am just wondering how many users will realise this is different to a normal ddl without it being explained to them.

    Nice to see the rte has been fixed up and doesnt generate font tags any more.

  • Excellent addon's to the toolkit.

  • They look nice but i guess they are somehow a little bit late, i already created my own.

    But on the other side am happy to see such controls been added as an open source.

    Finally i would like to thank you for sharing and keeping us updated ;)

    Regards,
    I. Qandil

  • Hi Bertrand .

    Nice color picking control. But i would like to ask what new in it provided for user. I made a color picker back in 2006 that supports same type of feature that you have just mentioned.

    http://www.codeproject.com/KB/custom-controls/ColorPicker.aspx

    Just being curious,
    Mehfuz.

  • The Color Picker looks very old, reminds me year 2002.

  • Maybe the HTML Editor will be good enough to get rid of TinyMCE! Thanks Obout!

  • HTML Editor:

    Why does it render wrapped in a table?
    Why doesn't it degrade to a textarea if script is off?
    What part of it uses AJAX?

    Combo Box:

    Why does it render wrapped in a table?
    Why doesn't it degrade to a standard select?
    What part of it uses AJAX?

    Color Picker:

    Why doesn't it degrade into a select list of colors?
    What part of it uses AJAX?


  • Really nice job on this. New controls look great. I'm glad the Toolkit is alive and well, and hope you guys keep up the good work!

  • Now there's a step in the right direction. Nice!

  • I like the accordion control persisting which part was open.

  • This is great. Keep up the good work!

  • All the controls look and feel a bit outdated. The combo box comes packed full of alignment issues in ff and especially ie8, have these widgets been tested at all? Rendering the combo box demo sends down 130k's worth. I cant see why anyone would choose this lib, its a buyers market and there are much better & cheaper (speed, size etc) options!

  • Wow, very good news. I'm glad!

  • but it won't support framework 2.0 :-(

  • Good work! But I am interested to know which "20 most voted for bugs" were fixed. Where's the changelog for the new release? I tried to search the issue list on CodePlex but there were no issues at all registered with the latest release?

    Thanks.

  • Agree on the color picker comment. Actually the color picker in the html editor is much nicer.

    I don't know why this seem to be a tradition at MS but it would help to provide some nice default styles to web controls and other web templates. Look to apple, yahoo...

    Sorry about the rant. The controls are otherwise a very nice addition

  • a lot of bugs, please fix them. for example calendar picker has problem if language is not english.

  • Good work! But I am interested to know which "20 most voted for bugs" were fixed. Where's the changelog for the new release? I tried to search the issue list on CodePlex but there were no issues at all registered with the latest release?

    Thanks.

  • Last update that came out also said it "only supports 3.5 Framework," but I downloaded the source and built it against the 2.0 assemblies. Will that still work for this version?

    Any way to know what the 20+ bug fixes were?

    Thanks!

  • The list of bugs closed since the last release can be obtained by going into the advanced view of the issue tracker on CodePlex, filtering by status (select "closed") and ordering by update date.

    While the toolkit will probably compile just fine under 2.0, the client code relies on so many of the fixes that went into ASP.NET Ajax 3.5 SP1 that there will be for sure some weird issues with the resulting code. Essentially, to make it run reliably well on 2.0, we'd have to port the fixes that went into Microsoft Ajax 3.5 SP1. That wouldn't make a lot of sense as this is pretty much what installing 3.5 SP1 does: 3.5 SP1 is a low-impact update that does not remove 2.0 itself so you can still run old sites that you don't want to migrate under 2.0 and upgrade only the sites you want to upgrade.
    Please note that VS 2008 is in no way requested and only the update to 3.5 SP1 (which is free) is necessary to run this release. VS 2005 will edit a 3.5 site with ACT just fine.

  • Thanks for the info, earlier this afternoon, the issue tracker showed no results no matter what settings I tried, but it seems to be working now.

    As far as 3.5 vs. 2.0, I'm fully aware of how VS2008 works with both versions cleanly, but we are working on a commercially released, web-based app that is stuck in 2.0 because of Silverlight issues (major component built years ago in Silverlight 1.0, throws all sorts of build errors when we try upgrading the app to .net 3.5, and we can't take the time to upgrade the silverlight piece to 2.0 anytime soon. I guess we'll continue living with the last version of ACT.

    Thanks!

  • Nice Article, I am waiting for this. Thanks

  • Hi Bertrand do you know of any resourses regarding using the client only version of the toolkit e.g. which js files to include with which control. Many thanks for all your hard work producing the latest Ajax tools and components.

  • @bodar: we are working on documenting that, but for the moment you can look at the debug versions of the scripts, which contain comments at the top specifying the dependencies. You can also use the script profiler control on an aspx page that contains an instance of each of the controls you want to use and it will give you the list of scripts it needs: http://aspnet.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=13356

  • looks great. looking forward to using it :)

  • Thanks for the great HTML Editor! I love the flexibility in the presentation of info that this tool now provides me within the framework! Thanks Again!

  • This is great work! I have been wanting to implement a nice HTML editor and was resisting rolling out my own.
    However, I need to support some additional functions and HTML tags. Is there any way to extend both the toolbar buttons to add custom functions and handle additional custom tags in the HTML?

    Also, is there any support for creating tables and div sections in the HTML?

  • Html Editor is Great but Color picker look old

  • Wow, just what we need, more crap controls in the ajax framework, nothing worth using yet.

  • I see an alignment issue with the new combobox and asp text boxes in separate columns of a table. In VS2008 Design view all is well, but when rendered the text boxes and the combo boxes do not line up. The text boxes appear higher than the combo boxes.

    Any thoughts on how to fix this? IE6 is the browser we are using.

  • @Rick: first check that you are using a doctype that switches IE into standard mode. If you still see that problem after you've done that, please file a bug here:
    http://ajaxcontroltoolkit.codeplex.com/WorkItem/Create.aspx

  • It is sad to know that .NET 2 is not supported any more :-(

  • HTML Editor does not work in validation control

  • @Gurvinder: thanks for the report. Could you please file a bug here: http://ajaxcontroltoolkit.codeplex.com/WorkItem/Create.aspx ?

  • The dropdown list part of my combo box appears about 6 inches below the combo box. I am assuming it has something to do with my css, but can't figure it out.

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