Mr Pike's Blog

 Diary of an ASP.NET bodger

Designers and Developers can live together.

We've been trying to find a solution whereby the totally none-coding designer works with the crayola wielding developers and the simple "Make a static page with some content" people. Dreamweaver templates are excellent for this but VS.NET makes them an impossible solution.

What happens is the template inserts a comment just below the HEAD tag of the simple html page.

<!-- InstanceBegin template="/Templates/test.dwt.aspx" codeOutsideHTMLIsLocked="false" -->

The designer saves the page, it all works and then the developer sets about making it work. As soon as they open the page in design view, the template is screwed because VS.NET moves the instanceBegin comment to after the title tag

 <HEAD>
  <title>template</title>
<!-- InstanceBegin template="/Templates/test.dwt.aspx" codeOutsideHTMLIsLocked="false" -->

The consequence of this is that Dreamweaver now finds nested editable regions, therefore breaking the functionality of the template 'philosophy'.

http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=457479  

http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=441814

 

http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=391742

 

Now, I'm led to believe that Whidbey leaves your code alone and basically, I can’t progress some kind of totally safe shared environment without that functionality. Dreamweaver is an awesome web design tool - especially when coupled with Photoshop and someone who knows how to use it (If you're reading this, then you aren't one of those people :P )

VS.NET will always screw over your code so while Dreamweaver is the tool of choice for frontend stuff, it won’t work with VS.NET (nothing will as VS.NET html mangles everything). However, code development with VS.NET is 10 times quicker than with any other IDE that I know of so whatever solution we use, it has to be VS.NET compatible, not the other way round.

I've looked at BasePages and they seem cool - John Rebbeck and Russ Neimhausers articles are succinct and clear but IMO its not going from A to B when all you want to do is server HTML with some dynamic content. Surely the fastest served page is control light with pure HTML in - not something that is inherited and processed, and then controls moved here and there to make it fit?

So - Whidbey - is it what I'm led to believe it is? I'll let you know.

 

Posted: Feb 19 2004, 04:15 PM by Mr Pike | with 9 comment(s)
Filed under: ,

Comments

Ben Miller said:

So why can't you go into the Tools | Options | Text Editor | HTML/XML | Format and uncheck the Apply AutoFormating options so that it leaves your HTML alone.

Just a thought.
# February 20, 2004 12:07 AM

Damian said:

Hi Ben.
I've also had some private feedback from Mikhail Arkhipov at MS (do you know him? haha - thats like people from America asking if I know someone in Manchester lol) and unfortunately, this doesn't seem to prevent the problem. You cannot 100% stop VS.NET from ripping your HTML to bits. I know its trying to be helpful but it's a deal breaker in our situation.

However, I've been sold on the Whidbey release :) so expect some prelim tests as soon as its in public beta.

# February 23, 2004 5:20 AM

TrackBack said:

# April 4, 2004 8:37 AM

Jason Terry said:

I have gotten around this problem for now by using an include file that wraps the html, head, and body tags called header.aspx. I end the html flow with a footer.aspx. This way, VS.NET can't find where to move the Dreamweaver template comments! So far, it is working well.

Regards,
Jason Terry
development@purpleguys.com
# July 13, 2004 10:42 AM

Damian Barrow said:

I heartily recommend checking out the express install for the new version of VS.NET - Whidbey. Master pages.... drool.

I really do think they're going to work well, though only time will tell eh.
# July 13, 2004 12:43 PM

TrackBack said:

^_^,Pretty Good!
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