Templates 3.0.0 Released

March 3 2006

Today we released a new template solution that fully supports and leverages new features in Visual Studio 2005, the .Net Framework 2.0 and ASP.Net 2.0 in particular. The new template solution fixes defects, expands documentation, and resolves file naming inconsistencies.

Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.Net 2.0

The new templates take advantage of several new features, the largest of which is master pages and content pages. This feature allows a single page (MasterPage.master) to control the common elements of a website. In previous solutions this was handled by a PageBase class which all pages inherited from and Header.ascx and Footer.ascx web user controls. The new solution removes the inherited class and the two web user controls and is far more elegant as content pages (.aspx pages) can be viewed within Visual Studio 2005 design view just as they would on the website.

Also added is the new Menu control displayed on the left navigational panel which dynamically displays links based on user permissions. Other more minor changes include that all base pages have been moved to the App_Code directory, and all code behind pages now use and support partial classes.

Defects Resolved

Numerous minor defects were also resolved including the following:

• Defect 136: Generated applications now support auto-incrementing (identity) columns other than integer (e.g. tinyint, smallint).
• Defect 75: The left navigational pane only shows links that users have access to.
• Defect 93: UseSmartNavigation was renamed to UseAdvancedFeaturesOfIE to make it more technology neutral.
• Defect 76: MaxSize is now specified in the text boxes of view all pages.
• Defects 113 & 162: Pages now have an underscore between table name and action (e.g. Employees_Search.aspx) resolve incorrect sorting of pages in Visual Studio.
• Defect 125: Updated private methods to protected in EditInline control base class.
• Defect 101: CompileSolutionOnly.bat works with versions 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 of the .Net Framework.
• Defect 161: ViewAll pages now support multi-line text boxes.