AjaxControlToolkit - Extenders - Whats the "current" approach?

Question

Currently, I have a ASP.net 3.5 web application for which I currently am working on the UI.I have been out of touch of doing web ui's for a while.

When i last did UI related work (way back in 2007), i used the Ajax Control Toolkit - specially the extenders like MaskedEdit Extender etc for implementing a lot of the UI functionality i.e restricting the user from entering incorrect data / formatting etc.

Question 1:- Is there a newer / better / easier way of implementing the functionality similar to the extenders provided by AjaxToolkit that someone would recommend?

Question 2 Also, my current application needs to support multiple cultures in terms of the number / date formatting. In my experience with Ajax extenders, for eg in MaskedEditExtender, I would have to specify the Mask explicitly which defeats the whole purpose of it being able to switch formats depending on the currently selected culture. Is anyone aware of the latest / greatest way in terms of controls etc that I can achieve this?

Note: I am open to lightweight 3rd party controls that could help me do this but would prefer not to touch heavycontrols like infragistics / telerik kinds mainly due to their learning curve / cost.

Answer 1

I currently use Devexpress in the office and at home i use jQuery. Microsoft suggest instead of using the AJAX Toolkit that you use jQuery. This seems to be the best way to go.

jQuery Toolkit for ASP.net is supposed to be quite easy but i find that jQuery UI does everything that you need it to do and doesn't have too much of a learning curve. Using jQuery is much more straightforward than neat javascript and is a useful skill in today's climate.