Tips & Tricks for ASP.NET, IIS, and Visual Web Developer : Deepak Verma

Tip#97: Did you know… How to Display Hidden Information in Design View

WebDevTools — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:20:01 GMT

The design view in Visual Studio can display glyphs and borders for the hidden non - graphic elements (such as div, span, form, and script elements). This feature helps you to see where the elements are and avoid inadvertently deleting the non-graphic elements from your page while editing.

To enable it in designer click on View -> Formatting Marks -> Show

Now you will start seeing the hidden elements on the designer surface.

Hope this helps,

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #92: Did you know … How to select a master page using 'Select a Master Page' dialog?

WebDevTools — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:02:20 GMT

Master page for a Web form can always be set manually in the source code, but here is an option to select the master page while create the webform using the 'Select a Master Page' dialog.

The path to select a Master page using the 'Select a master page' dialog is different for a Web application project than for a Web site.

For a Web Application project:

Right click solution explore. Select Add and then select New Item
From the Add new Item dialog select Web content form and click on Add button.
Select a Master Page dialog would appear. Navigate thru the project folders to select the Master page & click on OK button. The aspx added would now be using the selected master page.

For a Web site project:

While adding a Webform, check the select master page checkbox and click on the Add button.
Select a Master Page dialog would appear. Navigate thru the project folders to select the Master page & click on OK button. The aspx added would now be using the selected master page.

Hope this helps,

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #82: Did you know... How to migrate Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project to Visual Studio 2008

WebDevTools — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:32:56 GMT

Following steps highlight how a Visual Studio 2005 Web application project can be migrated to Visual Studio 2008.

Take backup of the original project
Open Visual Studio 2008
Click File -> Open Project and browse to the folder to open the project
You will receive the following conversion wizard to help you convert the solution or project to the current version. Click Next.
Select Yes on this screen if you want the wizard to help you to take the backup, otherwise select No and Click Next.
Be sure to read the summary on this screen & click finish
As soon as you click finish, you will see an upgrade prompt. Click yes if you want to upgrade to the latest framework otherwise Click No. If you select yes to upgrade, the project file as well as web.config file is updated for the latest framework. It's recommended to select the checkbox to do the same for all webs in this solution.
The conversion wizard would show you the status, select Show the log to see the log and click close.

For projects using Ajax you might need to install ASP.NET Ajax Extensions 1.0 in VS 2008 if you said no to upgrade. Please see Tip #62 to learn how to install it.

Hope this helps,

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #75: Did you know…How to maintain scrollposition after post back?

WebDevTools — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:43:04 GMT

When web pages are posted back to the server, by default user is returned to the top of the page. On a large web page, you might have a requirement to scroll down the user automatically to the last position on the page.

MaintainScrollPositionOnPostBack page property can be used to achieve this in one of the following ways.

Application level: To set the property by default for all pages in the website, open web.config and add the attribute to the pages node.

<pages maintainScrollPositionOnPostBack="true">
Page Level: for a particular page, open the aspx and set the property

<%@ Page MaintainScrollPositionOnPostback="true" ...
Code level: to set the property programmatically

Page.MaintainScrollPositionOnPostBack = true;

Hope this helps.

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #73: Did you know... about IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit Beta

WebDevTools — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:40:00 GMT

IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit Beta – is a free toolkit that helps Web developers, hosting providers, and server administrators improve their sites’ relevance in search results by recommending how to make them more search engine-friendly. The SEO Toolkit Beta is available for installation via the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta.

The IIS SEO Toolkit can:

· Improve the volume and quality of traffic to Web site from search engines

· Control how search engines access and display Web content

· Inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing

The IIS SEO Toolkit includes three modules that integrate with IIS Manager:

· Site Analysis, which suggests changes that can help improve the volume and quality of traffic to your Web site from search engines;

· Robots Exclusion, which makes it easier to control and restrict the content that search engines index and display; and

· Sitemaps and Site Indexes, which can help inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing.

The IIS SEO Toolkit Beta can be installed with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta.

· For more information, visit: http://www.iis.net/extensions/SEOToolkit

· For more information on the Microsoft Web Platform, visit www.microsoft.com/web

To follow Microsoft Web Platform on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mswebplatform

Thanks,

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip#66: Did you know... how to insert quotes values automatically while typing the attrib values?

WebDevTools — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:53:34 GMT

It's a nice time saver if you would like the HTML editor to automatically add quotes for the attribute values while you are typing.

To set this option select Tools->Options. Check Show all settings. From the left pane select Text Editor -> HTML -> Format and check the insert attribute value quotes when typing checkbox.

Now as soon as you hit "=" for the attrib value, editor will insert a pair of quotes and show the intellisense for the values accepted.

Select a value from the intellisense and press enter/tab. Cursor would jump out of the pair of quotes (you will have to hit the arrow key after entering the attrib value, if it doesn't show up a list of values).

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip#62: Did you know… How to add Ajax Control Toolkit to the toolbox?

WebDevTools — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:58:51 GMT

Steps to add Ajax Control Toolkit for Framework 3.5 SP1
Steps to add Ajax Control Toolkit for Framework 2.0

Ajax Control Toolkit for Framework 3.5 SP1

Following are the steps to add Ajax Control Toolkit to the toolbox for ASP.NET 3.5 webs in Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Download Ajax Control toolkit from here (you can download AjaxControlToolkit-Framework3.5Sp1-dllonly.zip this would contain the dll only).
Extract the content of the zip file downloaded in steps 2 above.
Launch Visual Studio 2008
Create new (or open an existing) 2.0 Web Application Project or Website.
Right click Toolbox and click on Add Tab. Name the new tab ACT 3.0 or anything you wish to call it.
Right click toolbox under the ACT 3.0 tab added in the above step and click choose items
Click Browse and browse to AjaxControlToolkitBinary\AjaxControlToolkit.dll extracted in step 3.
Click OK
And the tab in the toolbox will be populated with the ACT controls. You can read more about the recently added new controls to the toolkit May 2009 release at the ajaxcontroltoolkit codeplex site.

Ajax Control Toolkit for Framework 2.0

There might be a requirement to add the toolkit for legacy ASP.Net 2.0 applications.

Following are the steps to add Ajax Control Toolkit to the toolbox in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 for ASP.NET 2.0 webs

Download and install ASP.NET Ajax Extensions 1.0 from here.
ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 is a set of technologies to add AJAX support to ASP.NET 2.0
Download Ajax Control toolkit version 1.0.20229 from here (this would download AjaxControlToolkit-nosource.zip). More details about the toolkit can be found at ajaxcontroltoolkit codeplex site here.
Extract the content of the zip file downloaded in steps 2 above or extract the AjaxControlToolkit.dll from AjaxControlToolkit-NoSource.zip\SampleWebSite\Bin.
Launch Visual Studio 2008
Create new (or open an existing) 2.0 Web Application Project or Website.
You will notice Ajax extensions tab is added to the toolbox (this is due to Step 1 installed the Ajax extensions for a 2.0 website)
Right click Toolbox and click on Add Tab. Name the new tab ACT 1.0.
Right click toolbox under the ACT 1.0 tab added in the above step and click choose items
Click Browse and browse to the AjaxControlToolkit.dll extracted in step 3. (If you have extracted the whole zip file you would find the dll in SampleWebSite\Bin\ )
Click OK
And the tab in the toolbox will be populated with the ACT controls.

More about Ajax Control toolkit can be found at http://ajaxcontroltoolkit.codeplex.com/

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip#57: Did you know… How to manage web site configuration through a web interface

WebDevTools — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:37:10 GMT

The Web Site Administration Tool provides a web interface for you to manage different web site configuration settings. To launch the tool, for Web Application Project click Project-> ASP.Net Configuration & for Websites, click Website-> ASP.Net Configuration

for Website

For WAP

Visual Studio launches the tool in a browser window. You can use the tabs on the top to navigate & change various settings.

You can read more in detail for the various settings that can be managed using the tool here.

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip # 53: Did you know... How to edit the templates for gridview in VS designer?

WebDevTools — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:44:04 GMT

Gridview control has the flexibility to be configured how it's rendered using templates. Following steps show how the control's edit template can be changed in the Visual Studio Designer.

I have a GridView hooked up to Sqldatasource using Northwind.products. I have selected Generate Insert, update and delete statements while configuring the sql data source (by clicking the Advanced button)
Click on smart task for grid view & select Enable Editing check box for the grid view
Now to convert a column to use Template field. Select Edit columns from the Grid view Smarttask.
Select the column name in the selected fields list and click on Convert this field into TemplateField & click OK
Select Edit Templates from the gridview smarttask
From the Display drop down select EditItemTemplate
You will see the following
You can update the template now. For example, I have dragged dropped requireFiledValidator into it
If there are multiple columns converted to templates, you will see something like this & can select a particular column template to be edited.
Switching to the source view, you will find that VS has generated the source code for the template changes done.
Click on 'End template editing' from the smart task to exit editing the template

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #49 Did you know… how to set the editor to always place open braces on new line for functions in JScript?

WebDevTools — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:24:01 GMT

In Visual Studio, click Tools -> Options. In the Options dialog on the left pane select Text editor -> JScript -> Formatting.

Check Place open brace on new line for functions.

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #45: Did you know…How to change the DynamicData folder location?

WebDevTools — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:29:05 GMT

ASP.NET Dynamic Data is a framework that lets you create data-driven ASP.NET Web applications easily. It does this by automatically discovering data-model metadata at run time and deriving UI behavior from it.

By default for a Dynamic data Web Application the dynamic data folder is created in the root folder. Your application might require it to be moved to a different location.

Following are the steps to achieve this in VS 2008 SP1.

Choose which folder your want it to be moved to. For example, lets move it to admin folder. Create admin folder and move DynamicData folder under it.
In Global.asax add the following

model.DynamicDataFolderVirtualPath = "~/admin/DynamicData";
Change the content of files under admin/Dynamicdata you moved in step1 to reflect the new path location (~/admin/Dynamicdata).

For example,
- change the register directive src attribute in List.aspx and ListDetails.aspx
- img src in List.aspx and master page
- any other content which you might have customized and has to use the new path location

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #40: Did you know…How to scope master pages?

WebDevTools — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:50:08 GMT

Master page is a template page that can be used to create a consistent layout for your application. First you create a master page to define the look & feel of the application and then you create the content pages that contains the content.

You can attach these content pages to the master page at the following three levels:

Page Level: You can use the page directive on each of the content pages

<@Page Language="VB" MasterPageFile="~/Main.master"%>

Or programmatically set it in the content page Page_PreInit Event

for VB
Protected Sub Page_PreInit(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.PreInit
        Me.MasterPageFile = "~/Main.master"
End Sub

for C#
protected void Page_PreInit(Object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            this.MasterPageFile = "~/Main.Master";
        }
Application Level : By specifying the following in web.config file, all the aspx files will use the master page as Main.master (If aspx file does not contain a Content control, the master page won't be applied to it )

<configuration>
    <system.web>
               <pages masterPageFile="~/Main.master" />
   </system.web>
</configuration>

[You will notice that the pages node already exists in web.config, add the masterPageFile attribute to this node]
Folder Level: By specifying the following in web.config all the aspx files in a specified folder (admin) will use the master page as Admin.master (If aspx file does not contain a Content control, the master page won't be applied to it )

<configuration>
    <location path="admin">
    <system.web>
               <pages masterPageFile="~/Admin.master" />
   </system.web>
   </location>
</configuration>

[you will notice system.web already exists, leave it as it is & add a new node 'location' with the above content under 'configuration']

By setting master page programmatically or thru web.config you may not get the Visual Studio master page design time features.

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #37: Did you know…How to organize usings?

WebDevTools — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 10:28:52 GMT

Overtime C# source code files may have unnecessary & unorganized using directives. Visual Studio IDE organize using options can help you to unclutter the source code.

To organize the C# code right click anywhere inside the code editor, select Organize usings.

Select Remove Unused Usings to remove any using directives that are not used in the source code (this may remove some required using directives if the source code doesn't build)
Select Sort Usings to organize alphabetically the using directives (by default directives that begin with System comes before other using directives)
Select remove and Sort to perform both of the above operations

Thanks,
Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #35: Did you know…How to add Intellisense from script libraries for JS files?

WebDevTools — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:50:08 GMT

Here is an example to add intellisense for JS files in VS 2008.

So, you have two Javascript files

Jscript1.js with the following code

function validateForm() {
}

and Jscript2.js (wherein you want current JScript file to show intellisense including objects & functions declared in Jscript1.js)

Now to add intellisense, from the solution explorer drag drop Jscript1.js into Jscript2.js.

You will notice that the following Jscript document comment has been added to the Jscript2.js file.

/// <reference path="JScript1.js" />

And now you can start using the intellisense, try typing in validateForm in Jscript2.js.

Thanks,
Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer