Overview

ASP.NET 3.5+ provides significant advantages over its predecessors and as such, our focus is to provide you with optimized ASP.NET controls that specifically target this platform and fully exploit all it capabilities. To accomplish this, we have designed an entirely new shared framework. This framework's capabilities are the foundation for our latest web components, including the ASPxGridView and Editors Suite and the ASPxScheduler Suite. Existing components and libraries, such as the XtraReports and XtraCharts Suites, have also been updated to take full advantage of the new shared framework.

The list below provides a brief overview of the features implemented within this shared library framework and why the next generation of our web controls will give you the means with which to build stunning and highly usable web applications.

ASP.NET 3.5+ Support

Since we've designed our newest controls specifically for ASP.NET 3.5, you can be certain that we use the framework's features to the maximum extent possible. And because our controls do not need to be backward compatible with previous versions of ASP.NET, they aren't limited by the boundaries of this older and less functional framework. Of course this also means that you must use Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010 in order to use our newest controls.

Client-Side Functionality is Available

Our controls are designed to ensure reduced network traffic by eliminating unnecessary round trips to the server in response to each user action or as the result of individual customizations. We also offer you a comprehensive client-side API and even the ability to handle events on the client side. With our ASP.NET components you have full control over the control's behavior via client functions.

AJAX is Fully Supported

Each and every control provides an EnableCallbacks property that controls which method is used to update the control's content. If you set this property to true, the control will be updated using callbacks eliminating the need to re-load the entire page.

This callback functionality allows you to optimize how data is transferred to the client. For instance, if you use an ASPxPageControl, you can initially load only a single page's content. When end-users click a tab, the corresponding pages will be loaded using callbacks. Thus, your site will have a page-by-page information load mechanism that significantly reduces load times. In addition, only the page control will be reloaded which means end-users won't have to wait while the same surrounding data is re-loaded each time they click a tab. Finally, after a page has been loaded onto the client, there will be no additional callbacks or postbacks whenever the corresponding tab is selected because once our controls load data onto the client, they start client-mode operations.

The AJAX-Enabled Features and API page provides additional details on this subject.

Designed to be Extremely Lightweight

A crucial attribute of any web control is its size. When a well-written control is used, it is able to transmit fewer bytes to the client and allow you to deliver a more effective end-user experience. As you can imagine, we fully appreciate the importance of minimizing network traffic and that's why we've made every effort to produce minimum HTML code or scripts that represent our controls in an individual web page.

Our developers followed two basic rules when designing our new web controls:

• If a control doesn't need some portion of its core functionality in its current state, the corresponding HTML code and scripts are not to be rendered. For instance, a menu that doesn't require hot-track functionality will be smaller than the same menu with hot-track functionality enabled.
• If there is more than one approach to implement a particular feature, the one that results in smaller control size should be chosen.

With these rules in hand, we believe we've taken the necessary steps to ensure minimal control size. We have also implemented mechanisms to reduce the size of scripts and style management code. Refer to the following pages for additional information on this and related features:

CSS Image Sprites for Optimal Performance

DevExpress ASP.NET controls fully support image sprites - all images (except for background and animated images) can be stored in a single image. Sprites are referred to by their position and size within the image. A single request for the specified canvas image is performed to obtain all necessary images, which significantly improves performance.

Additional performance benefits can be achieved by defining image sprite settings within a CSS file and by storing this CSS file as a compressed resource in a themes assembly. This approach is now used by default within all our web controls.

Below is an example of a canvas image used in the Aqua theme of our ASPxperience Library.

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