Williamsport Web Developer Weblog

I am still studying web parts. I’ve learned how to export and import web parts but I’m not sure how useful this is because you can’t share web parts with other sites. You can only export a web part that is available in the site or import a web part that is available in the site. I don’t see how this serves any purpose then unless you want to save some web part settings.

I also learned that user controls used as web parts can implement the IWebPart interface and set all of the web part properties just like a class that inherits from the web part class can. This is good to know because I thought you could not use web part icons with user controls. It is much easier to create user controls than it is to define the entire HTML output through code in a class file.

Web parts require you to know more about implementing interfaces so studying web parts serves an additional purpose in familiarizing me with some of the intricacies of the NET Framework object oriented programming.

Today I expanded my knowledge of Web Parts, which is my favorite addition to ASP.NET in ASP.NET 2.0. I learned how to create custom properties for my web parts and I added a property to my Newsvine web part so that the user can change the RSS feed. It seems you never learn all there is to know about ASP.NET because I also learned there are two ways to register a user control. I was familiar with the method of supplying the source file path but I was not familiar with using a namespace with the tagprefix.

There are two ways to register user controls:

Register Namespace=”namespace” TagPrefix=”tagprefix” Assembly=”assembly”
Register TagPrefix=”tagprefix” Tagname=”tagname” xsrc=”pathname”

tagprefix – An alias to associate with a namespace.
tagname – An alias to associate with a class.
Namespace – The namespace to associate with tagprefix.
Src – The location (relative or absolute) of the declarative user control file to associate with the tagprefix:tagname pair.
Assembly – The assembly in which the namespace that you are associating with tagprefix resides.

A Web Part verb is a custom action that a user can perform. You can add verbs to the Web Part menu. The example code I studied adds a verb to send an email but it did not implement the actual functionality. My ASP.NET code for sending an email has been deprecated so I had to learn the new way of sending email to actually implement the new Web Part verb functionality.

Web Parts can exchange data through provider and consumer connections. I didn’t create my own version of the example code but I did get screenshots of how the Connections Zone looks in the browser and practiced making connections between web parts and then disconnecting them. I’ll probably expand my notes on Web Part Connections when I try to create my own and encounter technical difficulties.

I bought a book that is specifically on Web Parts, ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in Action: Building Dynamic Web Portals (In Action) by Darren Neimke. I am reading this book on my lunch breaks. Unfortunately, there probably won’t be anything else to learn after I’ve finished reading that book. Most of the articles and tutorials on web parts just cover the same basic features. I don’t think I’ll be able to find any advanced techniques or really useful examples because the developer community does not appear to be too excited about web parts.

I recently did some research on control adapters, another new feature of ASP.NET 2.0 that I read about in the book “Essential ASP.NET 2.0” by Fritz Onion and Keith Brown. Control adapters allow you to change the rendering of web controls so you can replace tables with divs. Microsoft provides some examples for rendering a few controls in a more CSS friendly format at their web site: http://www.asp.net/cssadapters/ – ASP.NET 2.0 CSS Friendly Control Adapters 1.0.

Control adapters use .browser files to determine the browser capabilities for rendering web controls according to the browser quirks. Unfortunately, these .browser files are not being kept up to date. For example, there is no .browser file for the Safari browser. I may create a safari.browser file because this represents another opportunity. I am finding a lot of opportunities for simple projects that would fulfill a need in the developer’s community. It seems there are a lot of minor things that other developer’s have not given any attention to due to the overwhelming breadth and scope of new technology today.

While researching control adapters I can across a programming language syntax highlighting component created by Wilco Bauwer which you can find at: http://www.wilcob.com/Wilco/Toolbox/SyntaxHighlighter.aspx. I’ve been using Microsoft’s QuickStart highlighter to convert my ASP.NET code into HTML for my help content but that requires a somewhat tedious process of cut and paste steps. I’ve used Wilco Bauwer’s Syntax Highlighter to create a windows application program that makes it easier for me to highlight my code and document it as HTML. Unfortunately, this syntax highlighting component isn’t perfect because it does not highlight the word WHERE in a SQL statement even though it is supposed to support that language.

I recently created a custom VSI file which is a kind of ZIP file used to install Visual Studio content. A Visual Studio Content Installer can be used to distribute macros, addins, code snippets, toolbox controls, or templates. I created my VSI file to install some custom macros and one code snippet. A special XML file specifies the content of the installer.

I should probably create some XSL files to display several of the Visual Studio XML file formats in the browser as a means of documenting them in alternative display formats. That would be an easy way to do something innovative and gain me some notice in the developer community.

Yesterday I learned how to create custom Item Templates for Visual Studio 2005. An item template is used to add new items to a project like a starter class file. You can export any of your project files as an item template but you must add the Export Template… menu option to the File menu. I created a custom item template for my help topic template file so I can more easily start a new help topic. I encountered many difficulties and technical challenges in getting my item template exactly as I wanted it.

My help topic template needs a style sheet so I had to edit my template to include the style sheet. You can use a few built-in parameters to replace text in your item template. You can also create custom parameters. I added a custom parameter for the author where I can plug in my name and I used the built-in parameter for the year so the copyright year will always be correct. However I did not like the date format so I had to go to a lot of trouble to change that. I had to create a wizard extension to augment the standard New Item wizard with my own code and add a dynamic custom parameter for replacement in the project file.

I will probably add a page to my web site with complete instructions on how to create a custom item template. It is very complicated and technical so it will serve as a good demonstration of my technical skills.