>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.

What about using iFrames... each i-frame esentially hosts a seperate page which can have it's own form.

>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.

Well, XML is pretty simple if you understand the basics and can use a text editor like notepad. I was thinking that YOUR code would deal with the XML, your users would just populate simple tags or attributes.

>
>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.

Yep... this is true... if the control is added programmatically you basically have to manage it's events and such.

However, you may look at the article Rick wrote about Dynamically Executing Code in .Net... bascially, your parser builds the .aspx code/class and then you compile it on the fly. Pretty cool stuff, check it out at http://www.west-wind.com/presentations/DynamicCode/DynamicCode.htm .

>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.

This is the closest to what I thought you were doing. It looked like you were providing encapsulted 'things' that a user to add to their .asp page with a few simple lines of code. A user control would work very simmilarly... as a matter of fact, adding it to a page is just a few lines of HTML code, similar to adding a textbox.

>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

Good luck... it's these kinds of projects that really teach you the ins and outs of programming.

>>BOb