Why are there less Telerik ASP.NET MVC controls than ASP.NET AJAX?

Question

ASP.NET MVC Controls - Around 9 controls.

ASP.NET AJAX Controls - Around 70+ controls.

I've read somewhere that you cannot use AJAX controls inside ASP.NET MVC web applications. Does that mean ASP.NET MVC is less productive?

Answer 1

ASP.NET MVC is a very new framework compared to ASP.NET Webforms. The ASP.NET MVC framework version 2 has only been "official" for about 4 months now. Give Telerik some time to catch up. :)

It's not fair to say that ASP.NET MVC is less productive than ASP.NET Webforms, but rather that there are fewer pre-built tools to serve the same functionality as those found in Webforms. That being said, due to the very lightweight and flexible nature of ASP.NET MVC you will find that a great deal of JavaScript tools and utilities are more available in MVC than they are in Webforms because there is significantly less hassle in implementing them. (F@*$ JSON with ASP.NET Webforms, thank you very much!).

jQuery and ASP.NET MVC are like peas in a pod and by combining them you will likely discover that you have access to more rich client-side functionality in MVC than you ever did in Webforms- despite the implementation requiring a little bit more JavaScript savviness than you may be used to.

Answer 2

Does that mean ASP.NET MVC is less productive?

ASP.NET MVC is not less productive, it's different. You don't have the paradigm of the postback and server controls. On the other hand you have a bunch of htmlhelpers and the possibility to easily create your own. Also there's MvcContrib, T4MVC and a bunch of custom htmlhelpers, providers, ... already to be found on sites like github and codeplex.

Answer 3

I don't think the number of third party controls is a good measure of productivity. Some of those controls can have so many features they end up making you less productive while you try and work it all out.

Answer 4

Does that mean ASP.NET MVC is less productive?

What a question to ask on a site where the majority of users use ASP.NET MVC! You know the answer you will get here.

In ASP.NET it is much easier to implement reusable controlls: They can use public properties and events to communicate with the hosting application. If the developmnet of your application can be sped up by using these controlls then its true: ASP.NET MVC will slow you down, because there are no such controlls.

I usually draw the line where a web is more an application with a webfrontend (Use ASP.NET, Telerik , Viewstate..) or a web is more a public facing website (use ASP.NET MVC, jquery, jquery plugins).