Partial Types potential for ASP.NET2.0

At Lambda the Ultimate it doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm about the new partial type construct in C#. Microsoft is introducing this new feature to enable separation of classes to separate files, thus simplyfing code-generation.

If you think about it, this should prove to make development of asp.net webforms (among other things) a lot cleaner. Take the entire contents of your InitializeComponent method and generate+compile it into your partial class at buildtime based on the <asp:> tags in your aspx file. That would would clean up a whole lot. The only thing I can see that is needed to acheive this is to supply support for all object property-settings in the actual asp tags.

Another potential ASP.NET 2.0 feature is masterpages. Microsofts ASP.NET PM Shawn Nandi talks to aspnetpro about it. And the ASP.NET Team has released a control to implement Master Pages at asp.net. Here I really hope they get it right. I fear a mix between PageMaker and FrontPage for handling this and I wish for a true object-oriented solution. At the moment I've implemented Page Controller based on Enterprise Solution Patterns for Microsoft .NET which basically constitutes Master Page. What I miss is visual inheritance in VS.NET that will work for inheritance hierarchies.

I can see the point about encapsulation and extensibility related to OO made by the Lambda guys. But on the other side there is a great potential for productivity enhancements. As long as sensible use of codegen and tidy integration with development tools is applied this will help Microsoft reach their goal of reduced codelines written per task.