Architecture question

[Guest]

Newbie to web development here: I inherited an eCommerce site that seems
oddly designed- There are 15 or so .aspx pages that provide content, input,
etc. Each page has a consistent look and feel, banner and logo, buttoms and
menulinks across the top bottom and sides.

What's odd is each .aspx contains the exact same code (html) for the
"static" items such as background, menus, etc. Tucked in the middle in a
table cell is a <div> that contains the "variable" content for that page such
as login dialog, shopping cart, etc. To create a new .aspx we need to copy
everything then edit the content within the <div>

My question is should I move this html out to a separate "inherited"
location and how best to do it? IOW how can I derive, inherit, subclass
html? I've experimented with loading html dynamically and manually creating
controls but this seems kludgy and I can't use the wysiwyg designer.

The underlying server side C# code does handles the logic in one base class
so that's not the problem, just the html. It's a real pain to maintain this
way and I suspect much slower since every change in content must be loaded
from scratch. Is this a case for Frames? I've read to avoid frames but this
seems like what should be used.

 

[John Timney \( MVP \)]

Start by looking at the concept of master pages, its probably ideal for what
your looking to do as it can provide the look and feel for common pages.
Also, have a sniff at user controls as these could do the job just as easily
for you given your description.

 

[Guest]

Yup master pages are exactly the answer, just ordered VS '05 today. Thanks!

 

[John Timney \( MVP \)]

Bear in mind then that the architecture of master pages in vs.net 2005 is
for .net v2 - the site you have inherited will be v1.+. So you'll need to
test your site under a 2 installation before you start migrating your pages
to work out what else you may need to change.