Datasheet
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Chapter 1: aesthNETics
With the .NET 2.0 Framework, however, you can modify the default behavior for that label. You can tell
your application that for every label dropped onto any of your pages, it should apply this particular CSS
class. Even better than that, you can say that for every GridView control, the header will be blue, the row
style will be gray, and the alternating row style will be white. When you drop a GridView on your page, it
will just be formatted that way without you doing anything else. Furthermore, you can tell your application
that in some situations it should make the GridViews all look as described above but, in other situations,
it should make them look entirely different (based on profiles, browser specifications, and so on). You can
also say to make some GridViews look this way and others look another way, based on a control ID. This is
all done through the use of skins and themes, which will be discussed in Chapters 8 and 9.
Finally, developers need to make sure that their customers can easily get around their site and that the
controls in place to navigate the site are consistent and intuitive. Historically, developers have tried
to create Windows-style navigation controls by using JavaScript or third-party controls. The brave
have even attempted to write their own navigation controls for their .NET projects. However, with the
.NET 2.0 Framework, site navigation controls have been introduced to help developers create consistent
and easy-to-use navigation elements on their sites. You want the drop-down navigation controls you see
around the Internet (the kind that mimic Windows applications)? Those are now included in this control.
You want to create a ‘‘breadcrumb’’ component to show site users where they are in the maze of pages
that creates your site? That, too, is part of the default behavior now included in these controls. Develop-
ers can now create a
SiteMapDataSource
file that can be used throughout the entire site for navigation
controls. Update the file, and all pages referencing it will be updated as well. Site navigation has come a
long way with the 2.0 Framework, and you will learn how to use these features in Chapter 6.
Prerequisites
There really aren’t a lot of prerequisites for learning good web design principles, whether in .NET or
any other development platform. In fact, the mere fact that you have obtained this book and gotten this
far into the first chapter shows a willingness to at least begin to think about design issues. Technically
speaking, though, there will be a few assumptions about your ability level.
First and foremost, you should be at least fairly comfortable with HTML code. If the following code
snippet looks completely foreign to you, the topics presented in this book will likely be confusing and
hard to follow:
<
strong
>
Hello world!
<
/strong
>
<
br
><
br
>
<
p
>
This is my first paragraph for my first page!
<
/p
>
Obviously, if you have a familiarity with at least the elementary concepts of HTML, CSS, and good web
design, you can breeze right through those sections. Similarly, if you have experience in developing .NET
web applications (with any version), many of the new .NET concepts will be easier to understand. But
there aren’t any concepts that a dedicated reader can’t grasp.
Another fairly crucial requirement is at least a cursory knowledge of .NET. It really doesn’t matter if
that knowledge is from .NET 1.0 or 1.1 for this level of discussion. A complete novice, though, will have
trouble following some of the programming concepts presented. This book will not make attempts to
explain in any great depth what a namespace or an object or a page class is. When pertinent, enough
details about how those features interact with the topic at hand will be given. However, do not rely
on the book to give a thorough breakdown of the .NET Framework. There are books that go into much
broader explanations of the Framework; this book is specific to some exciting new features of the .NET 2.0
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