Can asp.net ajax controls be used as pure client side controls?

Question

So, my question is, can any of the ASP.NET Ajax controls from the Control Toolkit be used without their server-side controls and without an ASP.NET Ajax ScriptManager.

For reference, I am asking in the context of an ASP.NET MVC application.

Clearly, some of the controls don't make sense in this model because they do postbacks to the server in order to accomplish their work (e.g. Autocomplete, CascadingDropDown, etc).

However, several of the controls would be interesting to use from non-ASP.NET Web Forms applications. For example, I'd really like to use the Calendar control in one of my projects*. But my curiosity is broader than just the Calendar control, so I'd be interested if there is a general way to use these in "pure client" mode.

If this is possible, can you point me at any examples or resources on how to do it?

*Yes, I know there are alternatives like the calendar control in JQuery UI, but for consistency with other, non-MVC projects that already exist, I'd prefer to use the Microsoft calendar control.

Answer 1

I believe they're in the process of refactoring the Ajax Control Toolkit to allow more client side only (especially for the use in ASP.NET MVC). The script only version of the toolkit is here (you want the one with the script files only).

Stephen Walther has a few excellent blog posts about using it, particularly there's one for the calendar control and one for auto-complete text field (there may be others if you search for them).