Event Management Project - General Questions

Hello,

I have been given the project of writing a web based Event Management Suite. I have a pretty good knowledge of ASP.NET and C# but would like to use AJAX for this project to elimate postbacks.

Goal:
- To create an interface that allows the user to visually define an actual venue.
- The user would define the size of the grid they need for the Event Location they want to define.
- The user would then be presented with a grid of the size they defined. The default type for each coordinate on the grid the user defined would be Floor.
- A graphic would be inserted into each coordinate on the grid to represent type Floor.
- The user would then be able to define two other types for each location in the grid.
- Seat
- Stage
- The graphic on the designated coordinate would change to reflect the defined type.
- The user would then be able to define the properties for the seats.
- Seat Name (ie A1, B2, C3)

This is only the first part of creating the Event Management Suite. But the Location must be defined before any of the other Event Properties can be defined.

Questions:
1. Is AJAX suited for this task.
2. If so what controls would you advise me to learn about and use.

I'm completely new to AJAX, so the more specific you are with answer and suggestions the better.

Thanks for helping me with this!!

You could accomplish this by utilizing the ASP.NETAjax Control Toolkit and Microsoft AJAX RC1. However, it would probably take a good amount of time to get the positioning of all of your elements/objects just right.

You should look at utlizing the ResizableControl and the DragPanel Control inside of the Ajax Control ToolKit. You might have to create your own control utlizing the DragOverlayExtender Class, and possibly the DragDropManager client side component.

However, even though these controls exist it would probably be easier and take less time if you have Flash experience to develop this kind of system. It provides better control for bounding boxes on dragging, duplicating movie clips and alot of other easy UI functionality. Plus you can then keep everything as far as the data behind the Event Layouts in XML for instance and pass the information to a Web Service that you create which in turn can store it in a database.

Just a few cents from my point of view. Definetely possibly in ASP.NET with ASP.NET Microsoft Ajax, it just will take you a bit of time to make sure the positioning and data behind it all works out.

Good luck,

JoeWeb