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| About VTdotNET |
Dedicated
Hosting provided by Alentus Corporation
site design & maintenance by:
Julia Lerman
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About this
WebSite
This new site was launched at the end of May 2006, but is still a work in progress as we transition to a new ASP.NET
2.0 website.
This site attempts to use a lot of the new ASP.NET 2.0 candy.
The
icon identifies many of these instances. Hover your mouse over these icons for a
tour of some of the features used. (Currently this is not working in Firefox...but
I'll get to the bottom of it.)
Master Pages: The main layout of the site is done through Master
Pages. The top (with the big Vermont.NET image surrounded by leaves and the login
info) and the menu and other items on the left are part of the Master page. All
of the other new pages are "content pages" based on the master.
more info
Membership and Personalization: M&P is built into the site.
There is a login control and also a number of login views implemented. The views
show different content for logged in users and not-logged in users. There are "members
only" pages with not really anything on them yet for logged in users.
more info on membership
more info on personalization
Web Parts: The home page uses web parts, which is dependent on
M&P. Logged in users can drag the parts around to customize the home page to
suit their needs. This design is attached to your log in and remembered. There is
a non-member login of "anon" with password "anon123" that can be used to play with
this.
more info
Themes and Skins and lots of CSS: Much of the design of the site
is managed by themes and skins. I have used CSS in a lo of places and am focused
on reducing my use of tables for page layout. Try it you'll like it! And so will
people who use browsers not built by Microsoft.
more info
Post-Cache Substition: Also new to ASP.NET 2.0. Using either the
API or the server control, you can designate a section of a page to be refreshed
dynamically even if the rest of the page is cached. I used this with the login status
at the top of the pages. I didn't want a user's logging in to flush a whole page
from the cache. So while the pages don't get rebuilt, that one portion of the page
will be updated to reflect the current status of the user.
more info
SqlCacheDependency: With one switch in the OutputCache directive
(and some setup in SQL2005), I can cache a page that has SQL data on it and automatically
have the cache invalidated when that data changes in the database.
more info
RSSToolkit:
This is a project of the ASP.NET team and not an official or supported tool. It
enables rss feeds to be used as a Data Source on the website. The RSSToolkit is
used in the custom controls that display the rss feeds on the right side of the
home page. more
info
CSS Friendly Control Adapters:
This is another project from theASP.NET team to show off using control adapters
and to create more CSS friendly output. The control adapters have been used to enhance
the rendering of the TreeView and DataLists on this site. The rendered HTML is designed
for CSS.So for example, the TreeView is rendered as list items rather than as a
table. The DataList is still partially rendered as a table - see the whitepaper
for more information. more info
Web Application Projects: This site is built as a WAP, just to
see what the experience was like. A number of pages and user controls were imported
from the original ASP.NET 1.1 website with ease. more info
telerik Controls: I've heard so much good stuff about
telerik's controls that I wanted to try them out. I have used telerik's
r.a.d.panelbar
control on the book reviews page to enable opening and closing the reviews. The
radPanel is designed more for use in menu systems, but it served my purpose nicely.
As of this writing,there is still an issue I have to work out due to nesting the
radPanel inside a DataList (which is okay to do) but then nesting that datalist
inside of another DataList. I'll get it worked out and update the site. Thanks to
telerik for donating these tools! more info
Coming soon - Atlas goo...
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