MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

Presented by George Solomon of Vibe Commerce

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

AgendaMaster Pages: What they are and why they are important

Fundamental differences between AspDotNetStorefront using Master Pages vs. using Skins

How Master Pages and the AspDotNetStorefront changes are beneficial to designers, developers, and end-users

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

What Are Master Pages.NETs way of allowing you to create a consistent layout for the different pages of an application

Have a .master extension Predefined layouts which can contain

HTML Elements Static Text or Images .NET Server Controls

Contain an asp:ContentPlaceHolder control which is replaced with the contents of the page that is being loaded

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

Why Are Master Pages Important They allow you to centralize the common functionality of your pages so that you can make updates in just one place.

They make it easy to create one set of controls and code and apply the results to a set of pages.

They give you fine-grained control over the layout of the final page by allowing you to control how the placeholder controls are rendered.

They provide an object model that allows you to customize the master page from individual content pages.

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

Fundamental AspDotNetStorefront Differences

Directory Structure

App_Templates

Provides a location for Master Pages and

stylesheets that should be applied

selectively rather than globally

Allows for a separation of layout and

structure elements from style and design

elements

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

Fundamental AspDotNetStorefront Differences

Directory Structure

App_Themes

Provides a location for stylesheets that

should be applied globally for a theme

Allows for a separation of style and design

elements from layout and structure

elements

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

Fundamental AspDotNetStorefront Differences

Themes

The .NET standard for applying a set of styles

across a site

All stylesheets belonging to a theme are

applied to the site regardless of whether or

not they are declared in the page or the

Master Page

Themes can be easily applied on a page by

page basis

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

Fundamental AspDotNetStorefront Differences

Performance – much quicker to render

compared to skins

No longer is a recursive loop required to re-

parent and reassign controls nor look

through those controls for locale strings to

string replace

Using Expression Builder tokens prevents the

page from being converted entirely to a

string before a string replace is used to find

all skin token instances

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

What Does This Mean For Developers Decreased learning curve and familiarity

.NET developers that work with UI know Master Pages and don’t have to learn AspDotNetStorefront skins

UI layout and structure separate from UI styles

Can work simultaneously with designers Flexibility

3rd party controls and add-ons

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

What Does This Mean For Designers Ease of applying styles

Add stylesheets directly to App_Themes without any changes to Master Pages

Separation of design and structure Can work simultaneously with developers

Theme switching Simple to apply an entire library of styles from a separate theme

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

What Does This Mean For End-Users Time

Design, layout, and modifications are much easier to implement, saving days or even weeks

$$ Time is money, and when changes can be implemented quicker, they can be implemented for less money

Consistency Maintain a consistent look and feel across the site exactly where it’s needed with minimal platform experience

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

Expression Builder Extension

New tokens can be extended in much the same way as XSLT Extension functions

Easily create your own methods for dynamically selecting data for display in .NET controls

One web.config addition and a class that inherits the System.Web.Compilation.ExpressionBuilder class

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

Expression Builder Extension

public class CustomTokens : ExpressionBuilder { }

<compilation defaultLanguage="c#" debug="true"><expressionBuilders>

<add expressionPrefix="Tokens"

type="AspDotNetStorefrontCore.Tokens, AspDotNetStorefrontCore" /><add expressionPrefix=“CustomTokens”

type=“Namespace.CustomTokens, App_Code”/>

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES

Nested Master Pages .NET allows for nested Master Pages Easily segment different sections of a page into separate files that can be developed and designed individually and independent of each other

Flexibility allows you to easily change part of a page by swapping out a Master Page without having to re-work the entire structure of the page

MASTER PAGES FOR ALL AGES