Response from posting: A detail the Webcontrol books don't teach you

I while ago I posted the following posting: http://geekswithblogs.net/mcastro/archive/2006/01/19/66393.aspx, and it generated feedback that I thought was worth going over:

Daryl wrote:

I can't see how divs should be the default tag for composite controls. Conceivably, one could create a composite control consisting only of controls that are rendered as inline elements. The composite control could then be rendered inline as well. Making div the default tag would impose a layout constraint (divs are blocked elements by default). Then it becomes a necessity to override the default tag to fix the issue.

My reply:

You're missing the point Daryl.  It's perfectly acceptable and done quite a bit by Microsoft themselves, to render table layouts within your webcontrol.  If you do this, you have to make the default Div (or maybe even Table).  You have to deal with the layout constraint just like you would if you were coding your control contents directly into a form.  Writing controls is more than just wrapping one or more element, you certainly need to take layout into consideration too.  That's where providing table structures around your child controls comes in.  If you're saying that all controls should always just render inline elements only, I say that is a more serious layout constraint. 

By the way: I didn't post this reply as a new posting to embarrass anyone, but I wanted to make sure you read it, and I also thought the dialog is important enough for others to read it as well.

posted @ Monday, March 20, 2006 8:20 AM | Feedback (0) |

Spreading the Webcontrol Love !

I never thought I'd be happy to say, it's good to be back in NJ, but I think it's just good to be home again - for a while anyway.  Oh wait, this posting is a few days late - I'm leaving again today !  Yikes !

I just got back from doing to three-city INETA tour in Austin, Pittsburgh, and Detroit.  In the first and the last, I did what's kinda become my trademark talk, “Hitting the Ground Running with Custom Webcontrols”.  As always, it was very well received in both places.  I love doing this talk because it gets people excited about a technology that most don't know very well.  In Pittsburgh I did my “Webcontrol Enhancements in ASP.NET 2.0” talk.  I did this one in VSLive San Francisco where it went real well too.  I got accepted to VSLive Orlando and I just found out I got accepted to VSLive Las Vegas - that will be my first visit to Vegas believe it or not.  So you can definately say I'm racking up the frequent flyer miles.  I'm leaving for Atlanta today to teach a two-day ASP.NET class there, then I'm teaching a five-day .NET class in San Francisco in a couple of weeks.  Though the travel gets a little tiring sometimes, I love imparting knowledge and that makes it totally worth while.  The worst part is being away from my little girl (2 years old, going on 17).

I'm gonna be putting together a 2-3 day custom webcontrol workshop pretty soon so I'll get the word out about registration for that.  So far, evangelizing this technology has been a lot of fun and very successful.  I maintain constant email dialogs with people who attend my talks and it never gets tiring helping them through their continuing education.

Off to Atlanta...

posted @ Monday, March 20, 2006 8:11 AM | Feedback (0) |

Free Microsoft Security event in NYC !!!

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Event Information

Registration

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posted @ Friday, March 10, 2006 7:41 AM | Feedback (0) |