Go to any travel or event booking website and you'll find the same user interface for collecting date information: the Calendar. Providing such an interface
in an ASP.NET application is a breeze, thanks to the built-in Calendar Web control. There are two downsides to ASP.NET's Calendar control: first, it is
not very useful when selecting dates far into the future or past, as you can only navigate to the next or previous month; and, second, the Calendar does not
use AJAX techniques, so each click, be it selecting a date or moving to the next or previous month, requires a full postback.
Mehmet Genc addressed this first shortcoming in Extending
the Calendar Control's Date Navigation by showing how to add month and year drop-down lists. But Mehmet's article was written in 2004 and since then AJAX-enabled
websites have become all the rage. I decided it was high time to update Mehmet's custom Calendar control to support AJAX. Specifically, I implemented
the AJAX-enabled Calendar control as a User Control. The User Control renders a TextBox control that, when clicked, displays a Calendar control from
which the user can select the date. Like with Mehmet's Calendar, users can quickly jump to a particular month or year by using two drop-down lists.
And best of all, the user experience is very responsive.
Read on to learn more!
Read More >