Bob,

My main problem is that forms can show up in pages at any time and place.

Also even in the framework itself, it's tough (not impossible) to work with multiple .NET forms on the same page. So if there is a .NET form for a web poll in one panel and a .NET form for articles in the body, a form from an advertiser (like Google) plus the user hard codes an HTML form somewhere else. It tends to cause problems with .NET's event handling.

It seems many .NET programmers wrap the entire page in a .NET form and then use controls inside of the form anytime they want. Unfortunately when working with outside HTML developers and external advertising content, this doesn't work out so well.

The XML idea is good but would probably complicate things for the HTML coders who don't know XML and would have to deal with linking external files. There is also the overhead in accessing the XML file and parsing it that you don't have with hard coding properties in ASP. Some of my design decisions in ASP definitely moved away from using databases or external files instead of properties because of the performance hit.

Another complication is tbat those using the framework don't get to see or modify code in the framework but just set properties. It's been a while since I've looked at the problem but I believe there were some times that the page needed to know details about the form tags and ID's in order to manage the event process in .NET.


I'd like to talk more about the controls because I feel that is the best hope in making this work. The bottom line is that an HTML only coder needs to be able to place a code snippet on a page and have it work, period. The only restriction they have is that they can't already be in a form where the place the snippet.

Thanks for your help and I do think there is a way. I'm not saying 'it can't be done' but that a solution has been frustratingly evasive.

Greg


>>If you can come up with a methodology in .NET that can match the simplicity of the ASP code snippets I showed you above, allows HTML users to make new pages, forms, and add any content they want to those pages without losing the main advantages of .NET in the process, I'd LOVE to hear it!
>
>What about user controls? You could provide a large number of them, they could just drop them on their page. Pretty similar to what you are doing. Except I don't think user controls can have properties. Perhaps those could be simple config items in an XML file.
>
>Just some thoughts.
>
>BOb