what's your methodology?

[dmeikle]

Ok,

So before I started doing asp.net (using c#) for web projects I was a java dude for many years. During that time I moved from basic jsp and servlets to things like struts (providing Model-View-Control with XML configuration). I absolutely loved it. you could create a couple of basic templates for the complete website and simply extend those templates inserting page results in areas of the template (defined in the base template).

Think of it this way...how many of us ASP programmers had a hundred pages of ASP (before dot net) that had a bunch of include files to 'emulate' a configurable template so you didn't have 100 pages to tweek if there was a bad link in the banner? Struts, once figured out, was a great alternative (but not the only one, admittedly).

So anyways, now I'm doing some stuff in asp.net.... I'm loving the custom web controls.... but I don't want to get stuck in the "100 aspx files in my site" simply because I'm currently unaware of a good templating software. I've heard that asp.net 2.0 should have this ability, and oddly enough I purchased the MSDN only 2 months ago (March 2005) and it only came equipped with version 1.1. So that's not necessarily a bad thing though...so my question is (finally):

what 3rd party alternatives do YOU guys prefer to use for better design patterns that allow proper inherited templating of your dot net site, rather than copy pasting 100+ asp files?
eg:
nstruts (got it to work, but couldn't find anything about template, only action handlers)
maverick (saw some basic tutorial on it tonight, but haven't attempted it yet)
others...?

If you guys have a real sweet favorite for templated asp.net please post, and shoot me a PM for some more info.

cheers!
david meikle

[dmeikle]

I just found some information on MS Whidbey...(previously longhorn? can't recall) but I think i read something a few weeks ago where you needed asp.net 2.0 (I'm using 1.1 and unsure how to get the 2.0 even though I just received the msdn library recently).

anyone use whidbey?

[dmeikle]

I just installed framework 2.0 and (after tons of circular links) managed to download visual studio 2.0 beta.

I created a masterpage.master file, threw some dummy HTML table with 2 columns as a sample. I then right clicked on the master file and selected 'create content page' (automatically inherits from the master template). Slipped a couple of content tags that override the placeholders on the master, compiled and tested it.

nope. got some error about the Page tag having an invalid attribute 'master'. Obviously it was still recognizing 1.1 framework, and looking a few lines below I noticed the error was kind enough to display it was still using 1.1. ok....so I needed to make it recognize framework version 2.0 for this... fortunately, it's an easy fix for anyone wanting to try this. it took me awhile to find, so I'll post it here for any of you guys for future reference...it's literally a 30 second fix (after a 1 hour search).

open IIS, right click->properties. select the asp.net folder tab (it's there once you install the framework from 1.1...). you can then select which gramework it runs from, either 1.1 or 2.0. it then worked as soon as I tried it.
Or you can create a virtual folder, call it whatever you like, point it to your current web folder, click ok. then right click the virtual directory in IIS and click on its properties. from there you can do the same thing (asp.net tab->framework 2.0)....you can even keep the whole IIS on version 1.1 and set the virtual folder to 2.2. it's sooooo easy!
so I'm looking at version 2.0 to do most of my developing now, knowing that if there's an issue with an older site, I can set its direct folder property to use an older version of hte framework -sweeeeeet.

by the way, the 2005 beta 2 is a handsome interface... Kudos to microsoft from this java dude.

hope you guys find this useful