First impressions on AJAX Extensions

It's been a long time since the last time i've posted here...However, i'll try to compensate the days where there hasn't been any posting with several posts about the changes in the AJAX Extensions which have been release to the public a few days ago.

My first impressions are really positive, though i still miss some of the features that have been removed. Bertrand already has several posts on the changes related with the OO extensions introduced by the team. So i think there's no need talking about them again here. btw, i'll just say that i'm glad the team removed abstract and sealed classes and that now an enum can be configured to act as flags just by adding a boolean to the second parameter passed to the registerEnum method.

Another good change is that now you only get page methods for public static methods exposed by your page. Let's face it: page methods as they were (in previous CTPs) were the worst thing that could exist. The only scenario where they had any justification was when you needed to change viewstate and get a single value back on the client side. to be honest, i never needed this and really think that we're all better now.

The UpdatePanel got lots of changes in this release too! The new ChildrenAsTriggers property still hasn't got a lot of attention but it's really cool to let you do something like this. btw, there's also lots of client side events which give you lots of chances of interacting with the page before or after a partial postback (i'll be writting about this in the next days).

You know, there had to be a problem. in this case, the value-added bits are completly broken since someone messed up with the necessary Array extensions. Currently, they're unusable. Lets hope that they solve this quickly. Stay tuned for more info on the AJAX extensions.