Slow loading SharePoint WebPart to run separately and progressively independent of initial page load

Question

We have a webpart for a SharePoint project that gathers active directory information and takes a good amount of time to load, and drastically slows down load time on pages.

I'm not sure if i can improve the efficiency of the webpart, but what i want to do, is make it run progressively independent of the initial page load, that way it doesn't effect the rest of the page.

I'm new to SharePoint development, but familiar with ASP.NET, and help or direction will be appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

Similar to the Search and list OOB web parts, I would use an AJAX behavior for the data load. You can accomplish it with an ASP.NET update panel. Pretty good walk through for this type of behavior here -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sp2010devtrainingcourse_sharepointdevelopmentwithvisualstudio2010lab_topic6.aspx