Introducing Server Controls in Atlas

Summary

This chapter introduced you to the server controls that are available to Atlas programmers. It walked you through using the ScriptManager control, which is at the heart of Atlas. This control empowers the download of the runtime as well as handles things such as error display messages. Additionally, you looked at the UpdatePanel control, which is at the heart of how Atlas enables Ajax functionality in existing ASP.NET pages using partial-page updates.

Other controls such as the Timer control and the UpdateProgress control are available on the server side to make your UI friendlier. Finally, you looked at some of the control extenders, which provide valuable client-side functionality to existing controls. The extenders are important in that they allow you to easily amend your existing ASP.NET applications unobtrusively. To extend ASP.NET controls for drag and drop, for example, you then simply add an extender to the page and point it at that control.

This chapter gave you a high-level overview of each control and how it works. In the next chapter, you will look at some applications and samples that use this functionality, as well as at the client-side controls you saw in Chapters 4 and 5, dissecting them to understand how you can program similar applications of your own in Atlas.