CollapsiblePanel Sample

CollapsiblePanel Demonstration

What is ASP.NET AJAX?

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ASP.NET AJAX is a free framework for building a new generation of richer, more interactive, highly personalized cross-browser web applications. This new web development technology from Microsoft integrates cross-browser client script libraries with the ASP.NET 2.0 server-based development framework. In addition, ASP.NET AJAX offers you the same type of development platform for client-based web pages that ASP.NET offers for server-based pages. And because ASP.NET AJAX is an extension of ASP.NET, it is fully integrated with server-based services. ASP.NET AJAX makes it possible to easily take advantage of AJAX techniques on the web and enables you to create ASP.NET pages with a rich, responsive UI and server communication. However, AJAX isn't just for ASP.NET. You can take advantage of the rich client framework to easily build client-centric web applications that integrate with any backend data provider and run on most modern browsers.

CollapsiblePanel Description

The CollapsiblePanel is a very flexible extender that allows you to easily add collapsible sections to your web page. This extender targets any ASP.NET Panel control. The page developer specifies which control(s) on the page should be the open/close controller for the panel, or the panel can be set to automatically expand and/or collapse when the mouse cursor moves in or out of it, respectively.

The panel is also post-back aware. On a client postback, it automatically remembers and restores its client state. This demonstrates the ability of these extenders to have some communication between the client and the server code. Click here to cause a postback.

The page developer can specify whether the panel should scroll when it does not expand to the full size of its contents, and can also specify whether the panel expands in the height or width dimensions.

Note: CollapsiblePanel assumes that the standard CSS box model is being used. Early versions of Internet Explorer didn't support that model completely, so please use the !DOCTYPE declaration (as found at the top of this page and enabled by default for new ASP.NET pages) to specify that the page should be rendered in IE's standards-compliant mode.

CollapsiblePanel Properties

The control above is initialized with this code. The italic properties are optional:

<ajaxToolkit:CollapsiblePanelExtender ID="cpe" runat="Server"
    TargetControlID="Panel1"
    CollapsedSize="0"
    ExpandedSize="300"
    Collapsed="True"
    ExpandControlID="LinkButton1"
    CollapseControlID="LinkButton1"
    AutoCollapse="False"
    AutoExpand="False"
    ScrollContents="True"
    TextLabelID="Label1"
    CollapsedText="Show Details..."
    ExpandedText="Hide Details" 
    ImageControlID="Image1"
    ExpandedImage="~/images/collapse.jpg"
    CollapsedImage="~/images/expand.jpg"
    ExpandDirection="Vertical" />

TargetControlID - the Panel to operate expand and collapse.
CollapsedSize - The size of the target, in pixels, when it is in the collapsed state.
ExpandedSize - The size of the target, in pixels, when it is in the opened state.
Collapsed - Specifies that the object should initially be collapsed or expanded. Set this to match your initial size. In this case, we initially set the panel to a height of 0 to match the CollapsedSize property, so when the page first renders, we don't see the panel expanded.
AutoCollapse - True to automatically collapse when the mouse is moved off the panel.
AutoExpand - True to automatically expand when the mouse is moved over the panel.
ScrollContents - True to add a scrollbar if the contents are larger than the panel itself. False to just clip the contents.
ExpandControlID/CollapseControlID - The controls that will expand or collapse the panel on a click, respectively. If these values are the same, the panel will automatically toggle its state on each click.
TextLabelID - The ID of a label control where the "status text" for the panel will be placed. The panel will replace the internal HTML of this control (e.g. any HTML between the tags).
CollapsedText - The text to show in the control specified by TextLabelID when the panel is collapsed. This text is also used as the alternate text of the image if ImageControlID is set.
ExpandedText - The text to show in the control specified by TextLabelID when the panel is opened. This text is also used as the alternate text of the image if ImageControlID is set.
ImageControlID - The ID of an Image control where an icon indicating the collapsed status of the panel will be placed. The extender will replace the source of this Image with the CollapsedImage and ExpandedImage urls as appropriate. If the ExpandedText or CollapsedText properties are set, they are used as the alternate text for the image.
CollapsedImage - The path to an image used by ImageControlID when the panel is collapsed
ExpandedImage - The path to an image used by ImageControlID when the panel is expanded
ExpandDirection - can be "Vertical" or "Horizontal" to determine whether the panel expands top-to-bottom or left-to-right.