ASP.NET MVC and...YUI? jQuery? Other

Question

After the last project I've done using WebForms, I've decided to pass on using that framework in the future. It's great for getting your basic features out there...not so great when you have more complex UI logic.

I'm looking at ASP.NET MVC, and like what I see so far. Of course the issue is that you lose the server side controls when you make that change. I've been looking for an Ajax Library that will a good replacement for the Web Forms widgets and like YUI right now.

Not having a lot of experience in this area, I'd like to ask someone who has more knowledge. Which Ajax toolkit offers the most complete widget library? Is it possible to combine two or more toolkits to provide supplement to each other (e.g YUI has a great Grid, Scriptaculous has a great Calendar, let's use the best of both worlds)? Or are you more or less tied to one once you choose?

Thanks for the answers and great sample. ExtJS definitely looks interesting, we spent more than that on the Infragistics WebForms suite and don't get the source. Flexigrid looks pretty good as well. Thanks again!

Update 2 Just found out MSFT will be shipping jQuery with ASP.NET MVC

Answer 1

This site (stackoverflow) uses ASP.NET MVC and jQuery, if that's any influence.

Also, ASP.NET MVC is now shipping with jQuery

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/jQueryToShipWithASPNETMVCAndVisualStudio.aspx

Answer 2

IMO ExtJS has the most complete widgets, but you have to pay the price to use it commercially. If you don't want to pay, YUI is very nice too, it has grown a lot lately. Most of the time, though, I don't need the widgets, so I'm happy with jQuery and the occasional jQuery.UI datepicker.

Answer 3

I have written an ASP.NET MVC application and I incorporated jQuery into it. I found that jQuery helped me manipulate things that would have overcomplicated my View... such as adding alternating styles to my grids, etc...

There are many plugins for jQuery that fill in a lot of the gaps that other libraries may have. For example, I used a great jQuery plugin called Flexigrid and I am very pleased with the look and features of the control. I wrote a blog entry about how to use c# 3.0 and LINQ to populate the grid with JSON.