Expression Web and Custom Controls

In case you wonder how Expression Web deals with custom ASP.NET controls, there are 2 things to notice :

  1. Having the control assembly into the \bin directory will not give you any design time rendering in Expression Web.
  2. Expression Web do not support custom controls into the Toolbox.

Ok, that's not good so far...
So how do you get custom controls to work in Expression Web ?

Andrew Jewsbury, the Expression Web program manager gives a solution on his blog :

http://blogs.msdn.com/andrewj/archive/2006/12/13/custom-asp-net-controls-and-expression-web.aspx

Basically you have to install the custom control in the GAC, then use a "<%@ Register Assembly=..." tag with fully qualified name, or a "<add assembly=..." tag in the <controls> section of your web.config.

Humm, this is not a designer friendly solution... but it works.
Note only the "<%@ Register Assembly=..." seems to work for me.

Then you get full design time support and even smart tag as well as IntelliSense in code for your customs controls.

No Comments