Using minimal.master in SharePoint breaks AJAX

Funny story, I just spent the better part of a day trying to figure out why our products do not work properly on a customer’s custom master page.

He was using SharePoint 2013, and using the new feature that allows you to upload an HTML file template and have SharePoint convert it to a master page automatically.

Then I tried some of the out of the box sample master pages: Oslo.master, Seattle.master and a minimal.master that I created using the design manager under site look & feel:

Click “Edit master pages” on the left navigation bar:

…and click “Create a minimal master page” above the list.

See, all master pages that I tried worked perfectly, except the minimal.master I created and the master page from my customer.

After a long comparing, trial and error I came up with this simple solution, there are just a few things to change to make AJAX work on these pages:

1. You need to remove the SPWebPartManager from the head. This control must be inside the ASP.Net form tag in order to work properly:

<!--SPM:<SharePoint:AjaxDelta id="DeltaSPWebPartManager" runat="server">-->

<!--SPM:<WebPartPages:SPWebPartManager runat="server"/>-->

<!--SPM:</SharePoint:AjaxDelta>-->

2. Next, you must add the SPWebPart manager along the the missing script manager control as first children of the body:

<!--SPM:<WebPartPages:SPWebPartManager runat="Server"/>-->

<!--SPM:<asp:ScriptManager id="ScriptManager" runat="server" EnablePageMethods="false" EnablePartialRendering="true" EnableScriptGlobalization="false" EnableScriptLocalization="true"/>-->

And that’s it, now my ajax updates were working correctly and there was much rejoicing.

I can’t say there won’t be any other issues with these master pages in the future, that’s why I recommend you don’t start with minimal.master, but instead, use the default, Oslo or Seattle – these look much more stable and work right out of the box without the need to tweak them first.

Good luck!