So I ran into a weird one tonight. I have an ASP.NET page with a grid view and some text boxes. Two of the text boxes have CalendarExtenders on them. On initial load everything is peachy. But I select something in the Grid and fill in the values of the two text boxes on the server side...things go awry. I'm getting a javascript error, "Date.parseLocale is not a function".

There is a lengthy discussion of this in a post on the ASP.NET forums. Apparently this is a known issue. The last poster said it was fixed in a later version, but I'm using the latest and it definitely isn't.

However, one of the forum users posted a hack to get this working. And indeed it does. You just have to put this in the Page_Load function of the page that has the controls:

   1:  //Hack I found here: http://forums.asp.net/t/1068191.aspx

   2:  if (ScriptManager.GetCurrent(this.Page) != null)

   3:  {

   4:      if (!Page.ClientScript.IsStartupScriptRegistered("AjaxToolkitTempFix"))

   5:      {

   6:          Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(this.GetType(), "AjaxToolkitTempFix", "Date.parseLocale = function(s, f){return Date(s);};" + Environment.NewLine + "Sys.Debug = new Object();Sys.Debug.isDebug =  function(){return true};", true);

   7:      }

   8:  }

   9:  

Hope it works for you as well. Enjoy. I would put a note about how this doesn't work in the newest version and the hack is still necessary, but I kept getting a 404 when trying to login to the forums :)

Along with the redesign comes a few new resources.

First, there is now an articles section. That's where I'll be putting article-type stuff.

Second, there are a couple new or improved resources there. My silverlight/inline xaml/firefox article has been updated for beta 1. There is also a little thing on the ASP.NET Ajax fade animation and editing Visual Studio 2005 templates.

Third, added a few reviews to the book reviews page. I think I had them referenced in my blog, but I forgot to put links to them on that page. 

Microsoft has some free training in Dallas May 3. See here for information. I'm signed up. Let me know if you're going so we can chat.

I've never played with CTP's, betas and RC's of any chunk of software as much as I've played with ASP.NET Ajax. That's probably why I'm so very happy that it is finally released. Yay!!! If you are a .NET web developer and haven't tried it, I highly recommend doing so.

Here is a little tip of you're playing around with the "Futures December CTP". If you have been using earlier version of the preview code, you might end up putting this in your ScriptManager to load the preview scripts:

   1:  <asp:ScriptReference

   2:       Assembly="Microsoft.Web.Preview" 

   3:       Name="PreviewScript.js" />

   4:  <asp:ScriptReference 

   5:       Assembly="Microsoft.Web.Preview"

   6:       Name="Microsoft.Web.Resources.ScriptLibrary.PreviewGlitz.js" />

Now that the RC for ASP.NET Ajax is out, we're just around the bend from release. Thank goodness.

So I downloaded the RC and the control toolkit and started playing with the slider, since I would like to use it for a project. Unfortunately, it took me a while to figure out how to hook up clients-side javascript events to the slider. A forum post finally solved my problem. I figured I would share the solution.

            
Sys.Application.add_load(application_Load);

function application_Load()
{
    var behavior = $find('funkyBehaviorId');
    
    //$find('funkyBehaviorId').add_valueChanged(function() { onDoSomething(); });
    //$find('funkyBehaviorId').add_valueChanged(onDoSomething);
    //$find('funkyBehaviorId').get_events().addHandler("valueChanged", onDoSomething);
    
    //behavior.add_valueChanged(function() { onDoSomething(); });
    //behavior.add_valueChanged(onDoSomething);
    behavior.get_events().addHandler("valueChanged", onDoSomething);
}

function onDoSomething(sender, e)
{
    var div = $get('showMeSomething');
    var textbox = $get('_sliderTarget');

    div.innerHTML = "" + textbox.value + "";
}

<asp:Panel runat="server" ID="hi">
    <asp:TextBox ID="_slider" runat="server" />
    <toolkit:SliderExtender runat="server" TargetControlID="_slider" BehaviorID="funkyBehaviorId" ID="_sliderExtender" BoundControlID="_sliderTarget">
    </toolkit:SliderExtender>
</asp:Panel>

<asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="_sliderTarget" />

<div id="showMeSomething"></div>

1. Private classes aren't handled well. This is actually a problem with Reflector, not with the plugin. Only two classes (that I could find) used them, so those had to be manually fixed.
2. Enums were decompiled as their integer values. C# will not implicitly cast an int to an enum, so all of those ints had to be cast.
3. Properties where not properly decompiled, but that's not a surprise. As you .NET geeks surely know, properties are syntactic sugar, and are compiled in IL to get_ and set_ methods. These showed up in the decompiled C# code, and had to be changed to properties manually.
4. Ref and out were often switched.

//Instantiate a control with the div to animate
//'faderDiv' is the id of the control to fade
var target = new Sys.UI.Control($get('faderDiv'));

var fadeAnimation = new Sys.Preview.UI.Effects.FadeAnimation();
//The control-wrapped element to fade
fadeAnimation.set_target(target); 
//The duration that the animation will last, in seconds                
fadeAnimation.set_duration(1); 
//The frames-per-second for the animation
fadeAnimation.set_fps(25); 
//Fade in or fade out? Set it here
fadeAnimation.set_effect(Sys.Preview.UI.Effects.FadeEffect.FadeOut); 
//Execute the animation
fadeAnimation.play(); 

<asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server">
  <Scripts>
    <asp:ScriptReference
      Assembly="Microsoft.Web.Preview"
      Name="Microsoft.Web.Resources.ScriptLibrary.PreviewScript.js" />
    <asp:ScriptReference
      Assembly="Microsoft.Web.Preview"
      Name="Microsoft.Web.Resources.ScriptLibrary.PreviewGlitz.js" />
  </Scripts>
</asp:ScriptManager>

<add verb="GET"
     path="ScriptResource.axd"
     type="Microsoft.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler"
     validate="false"/>