(Cross posted content from Telerik Watch)
For
many of you, your excitement for the new "Prometheus" Ajax is tempered
by your well grounded caution for what will be involved in moving to
the new Ajax Framework. Many of you, like me, remember the work done to
upgrade our applications about a year ago when RadAjax replaced
RadCallback. It took me a little more than a year to replace all
instances of RadCallback controls in some of my larger projects, so I
know this can be a long process and a good reason to pause when the
next Telerik Ajax is introduced.
Thankfully, the transition to "Prometheus" Ajax from RadAjax is nothing
like the transition from RadCallback to RadAjax. Unlike the previous
transition, the APIs for "Prometheus" Ajax and RadAjax are virtually
identical. That means the entire Ajax coding model you've spent the
last year mastering for RadAjax can be carried straight forward to
"Prometheus" Ajax. In many cases upgrading from RadAjax to "Prometheus"
RadAjax will only require three steps:
- Add an ASP.NET AJAX ScriptManager to your page (or add one to your MasterPage and make this a one-time step)
- Change
the reference on the page from RadAjax.Net2 to Telerik.Web.UI (or
change the assembly reference in Web.Config/Machine.Config and make
this a one-time step, too)
- Change the "radA:RadAjaxManager" tag to "telerik:RadAjaxManager"
That's
it. If you use the "one-time" method for the first two steps above,
updating your pages with RadAjax could be a simple search and replace
process. Clearly, if you have programmatic references to
"Telerik.WebControls" those will also have be updated to
"Telerik.Web.UI". The change is simple, though, and doesn't require any
of the major reworking that was necessary to move from RadCallback to
RadAjax. A perfect task for your summer interns!
The biggest
changes for "Prometheus" RadAjax are under the hood. Even though the
API has not changed, "Prometheus" Ajax runs on a completely different
client-side Ajax framework (specifically, Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX).
Switching to "Prometheus" allows you to take advantage of all the
development effort that Microsoft invested in building ASP.NET AJAX and
also opens up to you the wide world of ASP.NET AJAX enabled tools (such
as the
AjaxControlToolkit and the new "Prometheus" controls).
Like
the transition from RadCallback, though, RadAjax and "Prometheus"
RadAjax will be fully inter operable. You can use RadAjax to update new
"Prometheus" controls and you can use "Prometheus" RadAjax to update
existing RadControls. You can even use RadAjax and "Prometheus" RadAjax
on the same page (though it would obviously be recommend to follow the
easy steps to update your page before introducing both controls on the
same page). The dev teams have worked very hard to make it as easy as
possible to enable whatever upgrade environment you need as you adopt
the new "Prometheus" Ajax controls. I think you'll find the transition
to next the generation Ajax products to be very easy.
We know
that upgrading something like RadAjax in your projects will take time
and planning, though, so we're trying very hard to make your path as
clear as possible. RadAjax will not be going anywhere anytime soon,
with continuing product enhancements through the end of the year and
full product support for years to come. "Prometheus" RadAjax is the
future, though, so it is important to start planning your transition to
this product now so you have plenty of time to smoothly upgrade and
test your applications.
View the official RadAjax vs. "Prometheus" RadAjax comparison