Recently our newest web designer asked me why we use ASP.NET for our website. Reading through his question to the real one, I started thinking about it myself. Why are we using ASP.NET for web development?
The problem we find so far is colaboration between the design team and developers. Typically our designers create some snazzy cool look crayon laced web pages, then show them off for approval in all their glory. Once approved, the developers rip the HTML out and shove it in to ASP master and detail pages, and huzzah! out comes pretty website.
Since Dreamweaver doesn't play nice with Visual Studio, this is the same process for even small tweaks and changes. I would prefer to just write the backend and let the designers draw the pretty pictures and fancy CSS. Our current websites have plenty of reason to use ASP on nearly every page, so I can't do half in HTML, the other half in ASP.
I have no aversion to doing something else, another language, CMS platform, some other random buzzword, etc...
What are your experiences with this design situation? Are we doing it the hard way? Should we consider alternate platforms and languages? Are there any good, proven ways to allow designers to work on ASP (while still using Dreamweaver)?
Start learning Asp.net MVC as soon as possible. Designers will love you for that. :) And you'll be up to date with new development technologies that will also make your solutions much more robust and less complicated.
But otherwise. Designers should be able to read XHTML fluently. Learning asp.net semantics shouldn't be too hard. Then give then Visual Studio where they can manipulate content. As long as they know how asp.net web forms work things should be fine. They'll probably be able to do majority of things using just CSS. I know I can. Sometimes I do have to check resulting HTML, but it works.
Aside from Wicket (a java web framework), I don't know of any framework or language that would allow designers to continue to work on the design once developers have started to add logic to it.
I would suggest two things though:
Use a MVC framework - ASP.NET MVC, Ruby on Rails, Django, etc since this allows for far more separation of presentation and logic
Keep your presentation layer as stupid as possible and use helpers as much as possible or even better, put the logic in the domain objects. The view should only show or get data with absolutely no logic for processing data, this will keep the pages much more designer friendly.
I find your question very interesting because no matter what kind of technology the project uses the interfaces between the different roles will always cause some friction. I am not sure if there is a technological solution to this communication issue because the designer and developer speak literally different languages.
Depending on the skillset of your designers and developers an additional layer might help you out. I do not know how ASPX works but i am sure there will equivalents to the concepts of other technologies.
In case you have mainly static content which can be expressed in XML than you could provide the backend which delivers the content in XML with a defined Schema and your designers could describe the transformation in XHTML and CSS via XSLT. Given that your designer are capable using XHTML and CSS the addtional effort to learn XML and XSLT is not that huge. I find this solution much powerful than template languages which try to emulate the richness of the serverside scripting language in their own limited constructs. In case you have dynamic elements on the clientside like DHTML, AJAX or you name it you could define your own xml tags which are transformed to richer client side objects after the designer did their work. I guess the designer will understand the usage of these special tags and you provide the proper translation into client side objects.
I used this approach with some coworkes based on PHP. PHP was only the driver for the transformation. The content was assembled into xml with special tags which were transformed into XHTML and CSS via XSLT. Once the objects and the transformation for the different objects is defined you build up a library which can help to shorten the developement cycle of new pages of you webapplication. The benefit of the extra work is, that you designer can change the layout of the page without ever touching you server side code.
Maybe this helps.
Consider using either Expression Web or SharePoint Designer. The latter is now free.
I know you specify dreamweaver, but have you looked at Blend? It plays very nice with Visual Studio and is quite a nice app. to work with.
Related
Easy question. I used to develop websites back in the days of "classic" ASP, and when I'm asked to do a quick and dirty website for family or friends now, I still resort to direct HTML/ASP and some basic CSS and Javascript - I can get the sites up pretty quickly this way. However, I've had a few requests to design and develop some sites for pay, and thought I should catch up on my web skills. I have been using .NET 3.5, XAML/WPF, etc. for Windows apps, so I'm up on .NET, I'm just behind on the web end.
To the question: If I want to design/code a site that looks identical on all (at least somewhat recent) browsers and platforms, should I be using ASP.NET and AJAX? There might be a little database activity on the site, but not much, so I don't need an enterprise level, multi-tier extendable architecture... just something that looks good and works on multiple platforms without having to code all variations for each browser. After looking at all the ASP.NET books at the bookstore, it seems they all focus mostly on data and postback stuff. Is it still a legit option to use some basic, boring html and javascript with some Flash embedded where needed?
Let me know if I need to clarify the question. Thanks for your advice in advance!
Your question is more loaded than you think, but let me try to address a few points that I think are relevant.
First, how a site looks is almost completely dependent on the HTML/CSS you use and how you code the front end of the site and only slightly dependent on the server technology. So if you want your site to function across browsers and platforms, learn to code following web standards, with semantic markup. (Search on those terms for more info).
Also, ASP.NET comes in two flavors now: ASP.NET MVC and normal ASP.NET. I highly recommend, if you are going to get into ASP.NET, that you follow the MVC platform. It closely follows similar technologies (like Ruby on Rails) and will make the transition to other MVC platforms easier on you. Also, the MVC platform doesn't try to output as much pre-made HTML as straight ASP.NET will when you use their "drag and drop" controls.
Secondly, it really depends on the sites you are building, but straight JS (or JS + jQuery), CSS, and HTML -- and please don't use Flash unless you are embedding a video -- will actually work for a number of basic sites. If you need some things to happen on the server, PHP makes for a great platform. If you are working with advanced database access, and program flow, and since you are already familiar with .NET, then stick with it... MS has some great tools and resources to help you out.
Finally, a lot of developers use a favorite CMS or blogging platform as the backend of simple sites that still need the ability to manage the content easily. Expression Engine (CMS) and WordPress (Blog/Lite-CMS) are often used (both PHP based) but there are tons out there.
Good luck stepping up your game!
I would recommend learning jQuery. This will give you a browser independent abstraction for your JavaScript.
ASP.NET controls will render it's controls in a browser independent way, but that doesn't mean your site will automagically be browser independent. You still need to know how elements are rendered differently in different browsers.
I'd also recommend using a CSS Reset sheet as a starting point for your CSS.
All in all, if you've been developing old school ASP, you'll probably really love ASP.NET as it will save you a lot of time and looping. You may want to jump right in to ASP.NET MVC too.
To the root of your question, I'd learn ASP.NET if you're doing anything more than a simple brochure site. If you have .NET experience, and classic web development experience, then learning ASP.NET is not going to be a big hurdle and will be well worth the effort.
I agree with Aaron Daniels' answer about learning jQuery. jQuery helps a lot with cross-browser compatibility in JavaScript and some CSS-based effects.
However, you should also look into ensuring your site uses well-formed, valid HTML, and doesn't use too many CSS 2+ features. This should ensure that your site is standards compliant, which will mean it will play well with Firefox, Safari, Opera, and even later versions of IE to an extent. You will still need to do manual tweaking for IE - it's been too broken for too long for MS to be able to fix it properly in one go - so look into conditional comments for applying a separate stylesheet for IE users.
AJAX is a handy technology for "desktopifying" your web app. It provides a mechanism for asynchronous callbacks to the web server, so you can pass data to and fro without reloading the page in the browser window. This is how the voting buttons work on StackOverflow, for example.
Lastly, ASP.NET doesn't really have much effect on the end user's experience in terms of the look and feel of the site. It is a server technology that provides for writing complex applications to be delivered over the web to a browser. Having said that, MS have put in some extra goodies to make working with AJAX a little easier.
Hope that helps!
On most projects I've been one, designers has produced HTML code, then developers turned it into ASP.NET, including master-pages etc that should really be a part of design.
After it has become ASP.NET, designers could not work on the code with their tools.
I know that a lot of the design of ASP.NET is made with the purpose of separating code and design, and in principle designers should be able to work on design aspects with the Visual Web Developer, but I've never seen a designer using VWD.
How is cooperation done in practice, and what is about the best one can expect from a designer?
From someone who does both:
Most of the design should be done with CSS, so this isn't a problem.
The layout of the page, therefore, comes down to elements with IDs and classes (simplistically speaking).
I try to keep these IDs and classes as is, and place ContentPlaceHolders inside them as needed, when possible, and create controls or skins with the right classes.
Optimally, designers and programmers should work together, and know each others limitations and requirements (this cannot always be done, sometimes these are done by different companies). I think most of the responsibility here lies on the developers - they need the right controls to get the expected output.
Frankly, a web designer should care about HTML and CSS, not about what server-side technology is used to deliver them. The best I would expect from a web designer is to write flexible CSS, that can take a view changes to the HTML structure without breaking (that is - extra divs or tables, as ASP.NET tends to do).
A good ASP.NET developer will intelligently use the set of controls available. For example, in most cases, the ListView will do everything the GridView can, and produce clean, SEO-friendly markup.
In the ASP.NET environment, I would encourage the use of Expression by designers. Business owners can avail of the new deal from Microsoft and obtain VS, Expression, etc., for $100 for three years.
I think both developers and designers have to embrace each others world for anything to work.
We are still stuck with the old fashioned way of the designer producing PSD documents and hopefully rendering them into HTML.
Then we take them over and convert them to .Net, then the designer requests a change and we go in circles for a while before coming to an acceptable solution.
It would be nice if the designer could integrate into the HTML of .Net easier but I don't see that happening for a while, not while Microsoft advocates using scripting in your development..
I've found that using ASP.NET MVC will make the designer's job much easier. Especially if you stay away from using things like HTML.RenderImage, and instead place an IMG tag on the page with <%= ViewData["MyImage"] %> as the src. This will allow the designer to see the html they like and understand, while giving you the flexibility to set the source(which is all the developer should be doing). The goal being to stay away from ASP.NET controls, which would confuse a designer, while still keeping their flexibility to develop quickly.
I didn't see an option to create a web site in the c++ area. Is there a way around this or am I just stuck with C# and VB.NET
A bit of googling turned this up, not sure how applicable it still is:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/mcpp/helloworldmc.aspx
However, I'd question WHY you'd want to use C++.NET over C#, given that the languages are fairly similar at the basic level. Any perceived "speedups" would probably not be very noticable given that they both compile to the same IL, and as such are both subject to the JIT-compiler.
You can probably make your website work using C++/CLI. There is no tight coupling between a .NET page (aspx or ascx) and the language of implementation. You might even get the intellisense from within the aspx/ascx files but don't quote me on that.
So to set this up you would need to create a C++/CLI project and use managed C++ to extend Page, Control, etc classes, use HttpContext etc.
Another question is whether or not there is any point doing that. You would still be targeting .NET and calling to the same API. There won't be much performance benefit if at all and you will lose the IDE support for creating controls and you wouldn't be able to use WebForms from the designer.
Edit. If you haven't done ASP.NET before you will almost definitely be firing up a normal ASP.NET project and seeing how to implement something, which classes to extend etc. So it kind of defeats the idea of using another language.
You can, in theory, use any .NET language to build ASP.NET pages. F#, for example, is fully supported in VS 2010. Whether all languages are fully supported in the tools is another question -- particularly for a language like J# that has been deprecated beyond VS 2005 and doesn't support the full depth of features of the other languages (such as the ability to create new attributes).
At a minimum, you will need to do things like define an appropriate build provider to get things going.
Our organization has dedicated designers who design the page and cut it up in Dreamweaver. That's worked well in the past with ASP and PHP sites. Now we're trying to make it work with .NET, but are struggling because of the structure of a project in ASP.NET. How does everybody collaborate with developers? The specific points I am looking for are:
-Transferring Dreamweaver content to Visual Studio
-Changing HTML inputs to server controls
-Giving designer access to finished Visual Studio product so they can tweak layout
Thanks!
Obviously, there will be a slight learning curve for your designers. But with that said, I have worked quite often with designers (none of whom used Dreamweaver, btw, so that may be part of the problem) on asp.net sites. Usually, they will create the HTML exactly how they want it on the server like a static HTML page, then I will go in and replace form fields manually with asp.net controls.
On an aside, I have found that I have the best chance of matching the design using controls that spit out the least HTML, such as Repeaters instead of DataGrids.
Once the site is up on the server and programmed, they can go back in an tweak things if need be.
Also, just like we have to adapt to them a bit (making our server controls spit out html how they like it) they also have to adapt to us a bit and not rely as heavily on id attributes in their stylesheets as some items id attributes will be controlled by hte .net runtime since they are controls.
MOre often than not, a designer new to asp.net will feel very threatened by this new way of doing things, specially with user controls instad of include files, but its really not that different than classic asp/php development is.
The key to the solution of all your problems in this matter is quite simple, and yet so hard to fulfill: it's usually called semantic markup. If you can make sure that the designers to start with make their html semantic, and that the .Net programmers keep rendering the same markup but with their server controls where needed, the tweaking won't be a problem - the markup is the same.
So what is semantic html, then? you may ask. Well, it's not always as simple as one would like it to be. A good start is to make every page pass XHTML validation.
In my experience, designer-created HTML almost always needs to be at least refactored, if not rewritten. So, open a browser with the original HTML on the left, and try to match it as closely as possible in VS on the right screen.
Giving designers access to ASP markup is not a good idea, imho. Too much can go wrong if you only understand half of the tags you are manipulating.
How about using one of Microsoft Expressions line of products? I've heard they are to .NET what dreamweaver is to PHP/ASP.
I know Microsoft has made efforts in the direction of semantic and cross-browser compliant XHTML and CSS, but it still seems like a PitA to pull off elegant markup. I've downloaded and tweaked the CSS Friendly Adapters and all that. But I still find myself frustrated with bloated and unattractive code.
Is elegant, semantic CSS with ASP.Net still a pipe dream? Or is it finally possible, I just need more practice?
The easiest way to generate elegant HTML and CSS is to use MVC framework, where you have much more control over HTML generation than with Web Forms.
See this question for more discussion, including use of MVC. This site uses ASP.NET and the markup is pretty clean. Check out the HTML/CSS on MicrosoftPDC.com (a site I'm working on) - it uses ASP.NET webforms, but we're designing with clean markup as a priority.
As long as you use the Visual Studio designer, it's probably a pipe dream. I write all of my ASP.NET code (all markup, and CSS) by hand, simply to avoid the designer. Later versions of Visual Studio have gotten much better at not mangling your .aspx/.ascx files, but they're still far from perfect.
A better question is: is it really worth it? I write web applications and rarely does the elegance of the resulting HTML/CSS/JavaScript add anything to the end goal. If your end goal is to have people do a "view source" on your stuff and admire it, then maybe this is important and worth all of the effort, but I doubt it.
If you need the semantics, use XML for your data. I do believe in the idea of the semantic web, but my applications don't need to have anything to do with it.
As DannySmurf said, hand building is the way to go.
That said, you might look at Expression Web. At least it is pretty accurate in how it renders the pages.
#JasonBunting - Yes, it's absolutely worth it. Semantic and cross-browser markup means that search engines have an easier (and thus higher rankings) time with your content, that browsers have an easier (and thus less error-prone) time parsing your content for display, and that future developers have an easier time maintaining your code.
Yes - it's a pipe dream. Since working with a professional web designer on a joint project who HATED the output of ASP.net server side controls I stopped using them. I essentially had to write ASP.net apps like you would write a modern PHP app. If you have a heavy business layer then your page or UI code can be minimal.
I've never looked back since. The extra time spent writing everything custom has saved me a great deal of time trying to make Visual Studio / ASP.net play nice with CSS/XHTML.
i can't believe nobody has mentioned css adapters. many of the common controls used in asp.net (gridview and treeview for example) can be processed through an adapter to change the resulting html that is outputted to the browser.
if going the mvc route isn't a viable option, it is possible to write your own adapters for any of the built in asp.net controls.
http://www.asp.net/CssAdapters/