This control is now available from my CodePlex project @ http://www.codeplex.com/AspNetAjaxControls.

The following question has been raised many times: How can I force an UpdatePanel to postback from client-side JavaScript?  The most common answers I’ve seen include using invisible server-side web controls within an UpdatePanel, and calling __doPostback() with the UpdatePanel’s ClientID as the postback target. 

Both of the above answers definitely work, but they don’t seem to be an elegant solution and they don’t provide the additional functionality that developers typically require.

I set out to provide the following functionality in my solution:

1. Create an ASP.NET AJAX Extender control to encapsulate the UpdatePanel extensions.
2. Provide an easy to use client-side function to initiate the postback.
3. Provide a server-side “Command” event to allow the developers flexibility once the UpdatePanel postback occurs.
4. Expose client-side events during the lifecycle of the UpdatePanel postback.

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UPDATE: This control is now available from my CodePlex project @ http://www.codeplex.com/AspNetAjaxControls.

In this article I set out to breathe new life into the types of alerts, dialogs and prompts that are available to ASP.NET developers.  In ASP.NET web development we are typically limited to what the browser can support.  I am sure that most of us are very familiar with the JavaScript alert() and confirm() dialogs.  They are limited, not customizable, and do not support any rich HTML content.

The AJAX Control Toolkit introduced a few extender controls such as the “ModalDialog” Extender and the “ConfirmButton” extender.  These solved a few of our common issues, but they were still leaving me wanting for more.  I’ve taken what I’ve learned from using the above techniques and encapsulated them into one very extensible and easy to use prompt control for ASP.NET AJAX.

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