unique web pages in asp.net

[Guest]

I want to setup the presentation layer of a new visual basic.net 1.1 asp.net
web application separate from the business logic and the data access layer.
The presentation layer needs to have a front end that is unique for each of
the financial companies that I process for. Basically I want all processing
to be the same, but the asp.net 1.1 web pages to be unique for each of the
financial companies that I process for.
To accomplish this, I am planning to have a unique cascading style sheet
setup for each financial company that I process for. My problem is occuring
that when I am trying to use some asp.net 1.1 web controls, the 'asp' is part
of the tag. This is fine with me. However when I setup some "div" html tags,
the asp.net 1.1 ide changes the html "div" tags to span tags. When you have
"span" tags, span html tags can not be overridden in cascading style sheets.
Thus, I have the following 2 questions:
1. How can you use web controls so that html "div" tags are noty changed
to "span" tags?
2. To have this unique presentation layer for each company I process for,
what else can I do in asp.net 1.1 besides using cascading styles sheets? Can
you tell me what to do and/or point me to a url that I can use as reference
on how to setup various presentation layers? The only difference in the
presentation layer would be things like font, colors, images brought in.

 

[Showjumper]

Is ASP.NET 2.0 not an option for you? If it is an option, you can use
masterpages. When you say the asp.net1.1 ide changes divs to spans are you
referring to VS2003? If so, are you you in design view when it happens?The
design view on vs2003 is notorius for rewriting code. Just stay in code
view. You can look at user controls for controlling you layout if 2.0 is not
an option.

 

[Guest]

"showjumper"

Using asp.net 2.0 is not an option right now. Thus you are saying that I
stay in "code view" and this will not rewrite the code for me. The version of
visual studio.net I am using is visual studio.net 2003.

What does "You can look at user controls for controlling you layout if 2.0
is not an option." mean? Does it mean to setup my own "custom" user controls?
Let me know!

Thanks!

Wendy Elizabeth!

 

[Jeff]

To elaborate just a bit on what Showjumper said..

VS.NET 2003 should never be used to write HTML for any non trivial
applications.
Here's a explanation from someone who can better articulate than I:
http://blogs.msdn.com/MikhailArkhipov/archive/2004/05/16/132886.aspx

So, what most of us do is use VS.NET 2003 for all coding and database
connectivity stuff, and some other HTML editor for HTML and CSS work (e.g.,
Dreamweaver, FrontPage, etc).

Having said all that, this well-known issue with VS.NET 2003 has been FIXED
in Visual Studio 2005. Being that you are starting a new project, it might
make sense for you to do it entirely with Visual Studio 2005. There are free
editions so it doesn't have to cost you anything except the learning curve -
which you apparently must traverse anyway...

Now, about your need to present different UI to different client company...
Apparently this is one Web site? If yes, then then your app need some what
to "know" who is coming in. They would log in. From their authenticated
login credentials your app "knows" who it's serving and therefore how to
style the page for the particular user (or group). ASP.NET 2.0 apparently
makes this specific task trivial (at least that's how it's advertised).

But if you are bent on using VS.NET 2003, then you could maintain a list of
CSS files and associated customers (perhaps stored in a database, perhaps in
an XML file, perhaps - heaven forbid hard-coded). During authentication you
figure out which customer is requesting a page and then inject a different
css file name into the page that gets sent to the browser. I'm sure there
are other ways perhaps more elegant, but that will work.

-HTH

 

[Showjumper]

Yep you can encapulate page layout elements into user controls and use these
for adjusting your layouts - sort of like the include files of old. There
are also master page controls that were created for 1.1 but they are
problematic - dont have design time support and are have weird issues with
namimg the IDs.