please clarify some aspects of AJAX with ASP.NET web forms for a beginner

Question

Im familiar with asp.net web forms. I would now like to move on to writing web applications that use AJAX. I would like to get to the stage where I can create an app:

• that has "edit in place" (no page reload)
• where i can reorder images using drag and drop (also saves the order to DB)
• that has google like search suggestions while typing on the fly

1)So do I need to learn how to use AJAX.net and Jquery(my JS library of choice)? Can I make do using only AJAX.net or only Jquery?

2)As far a I know, Jquery will allow me to perform client side manipulations/actions and AJAX.net is the part that will allow me to connect some of my actions to the Server. EG. if I wanted to re-order elements using drag and drop, I would use Jquery, but in order to save the result of the re-order to the DB I would have to use AJAX.net correct?

2a)So In order to learn how to do the above Im thinking I should first learn Jquery so I know how to manipulate/ select elements, and then I can lean how to save these changes to the DB.

3)I searched the books titled "ASP.net AJAX in action" and ASP.net 3.5 AJAX, both of these books did not contain any references to "Jquery". Is this because they may be using a different JS library, or perhaps the book focuses on the AJAX user controls? I just found it confusing that 2 popular AJAX books dont make any reference to Jquery.

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

I won't answer your questions directly, but I'll tell you something that will hopefully help.

jQuery is a JavaScript framework, and it runs clientside (in the browser).

Anything done in jQuery can be done in JavaScript, because it is JavaScript.

AJAX refers to the technique of communicating between server and client. Your server is, presumably, .NET (C# or VB.Net or whatever). This is the language you write your server side code in.

So then, what you want to "learn" is the technique of connecting the server and client. This is done via AJAX requests (jQuery has a simple function calls to do this). These hit your server passing whatever data you desire, and then your server can respond back and you get a chance - in JavaScript - to process this information and change something client side.

So with this understanding, you should be able to determine what "things" you want to do client-side (re-ordering images, edit in place, show a select list) and what data or information you want to send back and forth from the client to the server (image locations, new text to be saved, data to be populated into the "suggest" like thing, before it loads).

So now you should be able to solve your problems, in general (step by step).

Hope this is helpful.