C# .NET - Is the AJAX Toolkit Unreliable? - Asked By Henry Taylor on 03-Nov-14 10:21 AM

I have used parts of the AJAX Toolkit for some time now and have had success.

Moving forward past VS2010 that has changed.  I had a great deal of trouble getting some of it to work with VS2013 fw4.0 and 4.5.

I used the web browser debugger and could see that I was stepping through jQuery code.  Since I had not put any jQuery of my own on the website it had to be the AJAX Toolkit code.

I started asking around to programmers I know and the consensus seems to be that the AJAX Toolkit is no longer reliable.  What works today might not work in the future if a web site is updated and I am in fact finding that out.  One person told me that it is open source and that has lead to some of the problems.

I used the Popup control extenders in the past but they no longer work in the newer version of the AJAX Toolkit - jQuery errors.

It could be that certain versions of the IDE, AJAX Toolkit and .net framework need to be synced up. Is there a guide some where that explains this?

Please comment on this and tell me what any of you think?

Thanks.

JavaScript that works today is not guaranteed to work tomorrow in updated browser versions.  AJAX is no different.

The less you rely on these open source frameworks or the latest hot library some guy has written the better off you'll be dealing with these types of environmental changes.

What can you recommend for AJAX?

Should I write all my own methods in javascript?  I have done some of that before but it is very time consuming and I am not any kind of expert at it.

It is either write it yourself or be prepared to find and fix their bugs as well as deal with integrating your fixes into upgrade versions of their libraries that will introduce new bugs.  The glory of open source = open crap.

It is why I try to limit my use of these so the pain won't be as severe.  It is also why I don't jump on every JavaScript library bandwagon when it comes out.