Today marks the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit's 11 year anniversary! To celebrate, we're releasing v17.1.0 that contains new features, bug fixes, an updated installer, and NuGet packages. More on this below.
A long time ago...
Originally known as the “Atlas” Control Toolkit, this library was released on April 12th, 2006. If you'd like to go down memory lane, here's the official announcement that was followed by ScottGu's excellent blog post.
The first version of the AJAX Control Toolkit contained 35 UI controls. Later, a number of useful controls were added: charts, file upload controls, a color picker, and an HTML editor.
The toolkit has changed owners and gone through lots of source code changes. Check out this visualization of the AJAX Control Toolkit's source changes since 2009:

DevExpress Maintained & Upgraded
It's hard to believe but you can still upgrade the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit from the very first release to the latest v17.1 without (major) issues. This is no small feat since it has changed source and evolved many times (see video). In fact, the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (DevExpress Edition) supports the latest versions of:
- All major modern browsers (Chrome, IE, Firefox)
- .NET Framework
- Visual Studio IDE
v17.1 - Major Changes
ColorPickerExtender - new palette
A new continuous color palette was added to the ColorPickerExtender. Many thanks to Yoann Nivel for contributing this feature!

The new color palette is an optional property and can be enabled with the following code:
<ajaxToolkit:ColorPickerExtender PaletteStyle="Continuous" />
HtmlEditorExtender - Preview mode
Since the HtmlEditor has been deprecated, we've added the preview mode to it's replacement, the HtmlEditorExtender:

This mode allows you to click on pasted links, which is not possible in content mode. To enable it, use this property:
<ajaxToolkit:HtmlEditorExtender DisplaySourceTab="true" />
AjaxFileUpload handler path - new property
A new property now allows you to specify the upload handler path programmatically for the AjaxFileUpload:
ajaxFileUpload.UploadHandlerPath = "MyFolder/AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd"
Helpful links
Helpful documentation articles are available here:
Download v17.1.0
You can download the latest release here:
Click the download button above and the get the latest bits.
Or use the Nuget package: ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Nuget package
Or download the installer and/or source from GitHub:
Try DevExpress ASP.NET
We’d like to thank you for installing the DevExpress Edition of the AJAX Control Toolkit and look forward to your feedback as you begin using it.
When we took over the fabulous ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, our goal was to reach those web developers who want to use great web user interface controls for their web projects and DevExpress ASP.NET provides that and much more.
Try the free DevExpress 30 day trial.
Email: mharry@devexpress.com
Twitter: @mehulharry
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