Ajax Control Toolkit

The Ajax Control Toolkit contains a rich set of controls that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. The Ajax Control Toolkit contains more than 40 controls, including the AutoComplete, CollapsiblePanel, ColorPicker, MaskedEdit, Calendar, Accordion, HTML Editor Extender, and Watermark controls. Using the Ajax Control Toolkit, you can build Ajax-enabled ASP.NET Web Forms applications by dragging-and-dropping Toolkit controls from the Visual Studio Toolbox onto an ASP.NET Web Forms page.

The latest release of the AJAX Control Toolkit is July 2011! Check out some of the new features at the announcement at Stephen Walther's blog post including the new HTML Editor Extender Control.

To view an interactive Web site that demonstrates each of the Ajax Control Toolkit controls, visit the Ajax Control Toolkit Sample Site. The official website for the Ajax Control Toolkit -- which contains reference documentation, tutorials, and answers to frequently asked questions -- is located at http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary/.

• Visual Studio 2008? Download via the Big Green Button labeled "Download" at the right of this page.
• Visual Studio 2010? Consider using NuGet to install the AJAX Control Toolkit. See instructions below.

Install the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit in seconds via NuGet

The easiest way to install the Ajax Control Toolkit into a Visual Studio 2010 project is via NuGet. You can see the package on the NuGet gallery at http://nuget.org/List/Packages/AjaxControlToolkit.

It's easy! If you don't have NuGet, it's a very quick installation.

First, from with an ASP.NET Web Forms project in Visual Studio, install the AjaxControlToolkit package, either from the GUI or from the Package Manager Console.

Next, for example, register the AjaxControlToolkit at the top of the page (or in the web.config for the whole project)

<%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit"%>

Now, add a ToolkitScriptManager and use some of the controls!  Here's how to turn a TextBox into a rich HTML editor.

<asp:ToolkitScriptManager runat="Server" />
<asp:TextBox
        ID="txtComments"
        TextMode="MultiLine"
        Columns="60"
        Rows="8"
        runat="server" />
 
<asp:HtmlEditorExtender
        TargetControlID="txtComments"
        runat="server" />

Which gives you this:

There's lots more to see in the AJAX Control Toolkit, so have fun exploring...Enjoy!