AJAX-enabled Features and API

Web components can provide three end-user interaction models - postbacks, callbacks or client-side scripts. Component vendors tend to give you the freedom to control the operation mode for each end-user action. While this may seem to be beneficial at first glance, it makes it harder to customize a control. In certain modes, only a portion of the settings are active. Other modes may be too slow for particular operations and so you have to optimize your control's performance, etc.

With our ASP.NET controls, you won't have to spend time to ensure that your control is operating in its most optimal state. We handle all user actions via callbacks and as you will soon see, we make certain that these callbacks are very fast. This guarantees that your site is responsive, that it requires fewer scripts to be loaded onto the client and that entire web pages aren't reloaded with each user action. And lastly, it makes it very easy to set and implement the control in your next web project.

Full Support for ASP.NET AJAX

Our ASP.NET components have their own native implementation for callbacks, so they do not require the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel to enable this functionality. The UpdatePanel is only useful if you want to synchronize server-side changes across several components. In such an instance, you simply place all related controls into a single panel and force the controls to send postbacks in response to user actions.

You can see this functionality in action in our Update Panel demo. Notice that the only thing required of you in order to enable ASPxGridView-UpdatePanel interactivity is to toggle one option and thus turn callbacks into postbacks.

Callback State

Our components do not use the standard View State mechanism. Instead, we have implemented our own smart state caching engine. This engine stores the difference between the control's initial and current state within a compressed "callback state". Our implementation guarantees that the amount of information to be loaded onto the client is much smaller. This means that every action (every callback) is executed much faster when compared with competing grid controls for ASP.NET.

Flexible AJAX-Enabled API

Many control vendors claim that they have a complete client-side API. Many suggest that most operations can be performed directly in the client browser... These features seem valuable, but when you look at them carefully, you will realize that they have serious shortcomings. To make this type of client-side functionality possible, all settings, all control data and lots of client scripts need to be downloaded onto the client.

The fact that large amounts of information need to be downloaded onto the client is only a part of the problem... Client scripts aren't fast, which may cause performance problems even on small datasets.

Our ASP.NET controls, including the ASPxGridView, provide a better solution that does not have these disadvantages – AJAX-enabled API.

Our approach is rather simple. We provide client-side functions that raise callbacks to obtain data. The data from the server is then returned to client-side event handlers. You can use these handlers to update required controls on the client side.

The clever bit is that end-users never know if a callback has been raised. Callbacks are done "in the background" and no part of the web page is reloaded. Since callbacks aren't visually indicated, it looks like no round-trips to the server have been initiated... And since many tasks require very little information to be sent, it seems like it is all done directly on the client. To see all of this for yourself, feel free to review our Focused Row demo.

Ready to evaluate the DevExpress ASP.NET AJAX product line?
Download your free evaluation copy or view our online demos

Have a pre-sales question?
Email us at info@devexpress.com or call +1 (818) 844-3383