ASP.NET 3.5 Enterprise Application Development with Visual Studio® 2008: Problem - Design - Solution

4.1. Problem

This chapter focuses on developing a user interface that is consistent, intuitive, visually pleasing, and meets the company's branding guidelines. This is accomplished using a variety of technologies in Visual Studio 2008. The main goals are as follows:

• Creating a style sheet that is used across all pages

• Creating a master page that contains the company logo, the application name, the user's information, a menu, a footer, and a content region

• Creating a nested master page for displaying lists of data in a GridView

• Creating a nested master page for all pages that enables the user to edit records

• Creating a tablike control for the menu, positioned horizontally across the top of the page

• Creating a tree control for the menu, positioned on the left side of the page

• Creating a custom GridView control that supports custom columns, paging, and sorting using objects at runtime

• Creating a control to display validation error messages passed back from the business logic layer

• Creating a base class for all pages to inherit that contains common functionality across all pages

• Creating a base page for all pages that enables users to edit records

• Creating the business classes, the data classes, and the table to bind to the menu

The main master page is designed to look like Figure 4-1.

Figure 4.1. Figure 4-1

The application has a header that contains the company logo, the application name, ...