On a recent project, I found i necesary to install The AJAX Control Toolkit on a new machine running visual Studio 2005. But where is the AJAX control Toolkit?

I went to AJAX.ASP.NET and there they have many references to the latest version of the toolkit, intended ONLY for Visual Studio 2008. If you try and install the 3.5 Version of the Toolkit in Visual Studio 2005 you'll begin to get error like I did:

Indirect reference is being made to assembly System.Web.Extensions version 3.5.0.0, which contains 'AjaxControlToolkit.ToolkitScriptManager'. This Project references a prior version of System.Web.Extensions version 1.0.61025.0. To use 'AjaxControlToolkit.ToolkitScriptManager', you must replace the reference to System.Web.Extensions with version 3.5.0.0 or higher.

Right! What now? CodePlex is apparently Awesome for opensource colaboration but it sucks at helping you find legacy versions. After some extensive searching on Google, I finally found the answer. The AJAX Control Toolkit 2.0 for Visual Studio 2005 (AjaxControlToolKit.zip) can be found here:

http://www.codeplex.com/AjaxControlToolkit/release/projectreleases.aspx?releaseid=11121

Download it, unzip it. Run the .SLN project file and ignore all the scary security warnings and run the project.

When you run the project a sample website will be created. I like to copy the web.config from this sample website for use in my projects. In the BIN directory of this sample website is Gold, Gold I say. AjaxControlToolKit.dll

To get the cool AJAX tools to show up in visual Studio:

1. open a project


2. Right-Mouse click on the toolbar and select "Choose Items"


3. In the Choose Ietms dialog, click BROWSE


4. Browse to the AjaxControlToolkit.dll found in SampleWebs\Bin, whereever you downloaded and unpacked the AjaxControlToolkit Zip file.


5. Select the DLL

That's IT!

Why they make it so hard to find that file online, I'll never know. But now you know and knowings half the battle.