[D1gitalIce]

Hey all,

One quick question. When I create a new site in Visual Web Developer, do I need to put all my old HTML content inside of the <form runat="server"> tag, or outside of it? I have a few books on ASP.NET, but none of them give me this information.

Thanks

This post has been edited by D1gitalIce: 08 December 2008 - 02:14 PM

[Jayman]

Inside the Form tag.

[D1gitalIce]

I guess I don't understand what is going on then.

[Jayman]

Post the code that you have and I am certain that we can provide an explanation as to what is going wrong.

[D1gitalIce]

It is a lot of code lol.

Here is the scoop. I am running a web page for a ski hill, and static HTML just isn't going to serve my needs very well. What I am trying to do is have a news column on the front page that can be updated on a daily basis or by modifying an external file that the website can read and display and dynamically update the snow report from a remote machine at the hill.

I am planning on adding an image gallery, not sure how I am gonna go about that. I would really like to use Lightbox to display the images, but Javascript is just too heavy for my taste, but will use it if needed.

I am kind of at a loss as to how I am going to do all of these things. The main thing right now is having a "dynamic" update to the news and report pages without having to go in and modify an HTML file every single day.

Is ASP.NET really what I am looking for? Or should I be using something else?


Thanks

This post has been edited by D1gitalIce: 08 December 2008 - 07:18 PM

[Jayman]

ASP.NET will certainly do everything you need it to do, PHP could also serve your purpose.

Developing in ASP.NET is pretty straight forward. However from what you described, I think it would be in your best interest to build it from the ground up. Instead of just pasting existing HTML into it and trying to make it work. Just my 2 cents.

You will be able to achieve a much more scalable site that will be able to grow with any future needs.

You can integrate Ajax controls, these come with Visual Studio or from the AjaxControlToolkit, within the site to provide asynchronous partial page updates. Meaning you can update content in certain areas of the web page without having to render the entire page again.

Geez, I sound like I'm selling the stuff. Anyway, the answer is yes this can do what you need.

[D1gitalIce]

So really all I am doing is just re-writing my HTML layout inside of the <form> tag correct?

[Jayman]

Yes.

[D1gitalIce]

I don't really understand why you put it into a <form> tag. My pages layout (header, footer, main column, side column) are not a "form" per say. And all of my current page is written with just <p> tags and such.

How does <form> fit into all of it?

I know Microsoft calls the pages "web forms", but I always thought a form was something a user types text into and has a submit button or something.

Would you be able to explain that to me?

p.s I feel like such a noob asking these questions, but these books really do not give a good explanation how to make the transition from static pages to dynamic.

This post has been edited by D1gitalIce: 10 December 2008 - 10:07 AM

[Jayman]

You can find a very basic description of the purpose of the Form tag here.

[D1gitalIce]

I give up lol. It would be much faster for me to just open up the HTML file that I currently have and just add a new set of headline and item tags and be done with it.

I just wish books would give a better explanation of what is actually going on here.

I know XHTML and CSS pretty well, but trying to get dynamic content that can be updated every day is next to impossible without spending months and months reading books.