Working with JQuery in ASP.NET using Visual Studio

BANGALORE, INDIA: Visual Studio 2008 contains a large number of new features. One of the most useful feature being client-side JavaScript debugging. Using this feature, you can set up breakpoints in JavaScript in your ASP.NET page or in a .JS file and hit it when debugging. You can view values of variables, change code on the fly and more.

However, JavaScript is still a language where one needs to write quite a bit of code to work. This is where the JQuery open source JavaScript library comes in. JQuery is a very small but very powerful library in JavaScript that allows you to manipulate elements on the page with very minimal code.

JQuery has a complete API consisting of 'selectors' (elements on the page), 'actions' (commands that you can run against them) and 'animations.' This article however, does not delve deeply into the command syntax. Instead it shows how you can combine the power of Visual Studio, ASP.NET and JQuery in one integrated environment.

We will use JQuery for a small application on ASP.NET using the free Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1 that is available from Microsoft at www.asp.net or from this month's PCQ DVD. You will also need to get a few other items as well to get this to work.

First off, install the Visual Web Developer 2008 (VWD) on your machine. You also need to download support for '-vsdoc.js IntelliSense' from http://tinyurl.com/ vsdocpatch. Once this is installed, head over to the JQuery site at www.jquery.com.

Go to the Download section and get the 'Minified' and the 'Documentation: Visual Studio' files. Rename them to jquery.js and jquery-vsdoc.js and put both files into your ASP.NET application folder by dragging and dropping them into the Solution Explorer in VWD.

To use the JQuery library in your ASP.NET page, simply use a