CastleSoft has just purchased the amazing ASP.NET library from Gaiaware, features of the soon to be released 3.6 release include:
1. Adaptive Rendering
Adaptive Rendering is a mind-blowing concept that enables dynamic insertion, removal, moving and replacement of individual controls. The concept has far reaching implications and is the breakthrough technology that will make you hunger for Gaia as the building blocks for your UI layer
- Click here for a sample that demonstrates dynamic inserts and removals of controls and compare it to the usage of traditional partial rendering
- Click here for a sample of the chess game featuring dynamic control moves
- Click here for a sample of our "PageFlakes" sample that also features dynamic moves
- Click here to check out a sample that demonstrates all features of adaptive rendering, including control replacements via databinding
Jan Blomquist has written an
extensive review of Adaptive Rendering
on his personal blog.
2. Ajax GridView
The Gaia Ajax GridView is a premier example of adaptive rendering as it enables the worlds most advanced GridView for ASP.NET without much code at all. The GridView still supports all the operations like ( filtering, sorting, selection, deletions, updates, etc ) and it's all ajaxified thanks to adaptive rendering.
- Click here for a sample that demonstrates the Gaia Ajax GridView in action
3. 100++ new Samples! 
In the package you will find a total of 128 samples ranging from minimalistic ones to extensive, almost full applications in themselves. This is all packaged into a new samples framework that simplifies navigation, code view, VB.NET code availability, etc.
Note: The samples are now utilizing the WAP project type
4. Completely new Effect API
Faster and more effect options to choose from. Enjoy parallel and queued effects and add them directly to the Effects collection on the controls. The Effects was also successfully moved out of the core and extensions and that yields JavaScript savings of around 50Kb on the initial payload.
Code:
1: zWindow.Effects.Add(
2: new EffectParallel(
3: new EffectShake(),
4: Window.ApplyToContent(new EffectHighlight()),
5: new EffectMorph("width: 640px;")));
Another interessting feature is the ability to attach effects to the various client-side events of controls. That means you can effect-ify a control without dispatching an ajax request to do it.
- Click here for a sample that demonstrates the usage of parallel effects
- Click here for a sample that demonstrates the usage of purely clientside events
- Click here for a sample on howto enhance the behavior of the various controls in the Suite.
5. More Events and Properties
Many of the events and properties that was previously only available through the use of Aspects is now directly available on the controls themselves. We've created a feature called AspectBinding which actually uses the underlying aspects and exposes Properties, events and methods on the underlying Aspects. Want to set your Gaia Window modal? Just add the property Modal="True" and it is done! Subscribe to events like OnClick, OnDoubleClick, OnBlur, OnFocused, OnMouseOver, OnMouseOut, OnSelect ++ in all your controls
Here's a quick example of all the events available declaratively on the TextBox
1: <gaia:TextBox
2: ID="zInput"
3: AutoPostBack="true"
4: KeyChangeEvents="true"
5: KeyChangeEventsInterval="250"
6: runat="server"
7: OnBlur="zInput_Blur"
8: OnFocused="zInput_Focus"
9: OnDoubleClick="zInput_DoubleClick"
10: OnTextChanged="zInput_TextChanged"
11: OnSelect="zInput_TextSelected"></gaia:TextBox>
6. Increased IE6 Compatibility
The imortal browser is still widely used and must be supported. We've increased our compatibility on the gaiax skin and functional level drastically. We will also continue to do investments in supporting the browser.
7. More skins
There will be more skins available in the 3.6 version. This is still work in progress since many of the skins are not production ready yet, but you can see some previews by changing the themes in the samples.
8. New Control: BrowserHistory
Now you can interact with the browser navigation API by setting various checkpoints that get's triggered when the user browses back and forth. We've created many examples on the usage of this control to fix the "dreaded back button issue in ajax applications".
- Click here for a sample that demonstrate basic usage of the BrowserHistory Control
- Click here for a samples that demonstrates how to enable navigation between dynamically loaded user controls
- Click here for a usage scenario in an advanced sample demonstrating asyncronhous search
9. New Control: ImageMap
The ImageMap control really makes sense in Ajax applications as it allows you to mark different regions on an image and capture those regions to dispatch this information back to the server.
10. New Controls: Validators
Now available in the Gaia Ajax suite is a collection of different validators. Fully ajaxified and ready to use out of the box.