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

Tip#100: Did you know… How to view ASP.NET trace information?

WebDevTools — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:24:00 GMT

You can enable ASP.NET tracing either at an Application level or at a page level; see Tip# 77: Did you know… How to enable Page Level Tracing for your ASP.NET pages? for more information.

With the tracing enabled, you can view the trace output in a trace viewer by navigation to trace.axd from the root of your application. For example, if the URL of your application is http://localhost:11423/Website, then the trace viewer can be accessed at http://localhost:11423/WebSite1/trace.axd.

You can click on the “View Details” link of a requested page to see further information about that specific page.

To write to the trace output, you can add the statment Trace.Write(“This is an action in my page.”) into your code.

The trace request limit and whether the most recent tracing data is kept and shown in the viewer can be specified in the web.config file as follows:

<system.web>
<trace enabled=”true” mostRecent=”true” pageOutput=”true” requestLimit=”20” />

Anh Phan

SDET, Visual Web Developer

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#63: Did you know…How to specify a fixed port for Visual Studio Development Server while using WAPs?

WebDevTools — Wed, 20 May 2009 00:59:18 GMT

In Tip#21 we showed you how to set a fixed port for the Developer Web Server in Web Sites.

Here is how you will be able to configure this for Web Application Projects.

1. Go to the properties page of WAP. Right Click on your Web Application and click on Properties in context menu. This will take you to the Properties page.

2. Select Web Tab in this page.

3. Under Servers section, select the Use Visual Studio Development Server option. Then select Specific Port and enter the port on which you want your App to run.

4. View your page in browser and you will see that Visual studio has assigned the port you configured for your Development Server.

Enjoy!

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #61: Did you know… How to create an ASP.Net Dynamic Data Web Site?

WebDevTools — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:54:22 GMT

If your web site is heavily data driven then here is a quick and easy way for you to create one without writing much code. All you need is Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 installed on your box.

Dynamic Data Web Sites makes use of a mechanism called Scaffolding. When Scaffolding is enabled it lets ASP.Net go through your data model and generate web pages for your tables. These generated pages have Insert, Delete and Update capabilities for each table.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Create a Dynamic Data Web Site.

Go to File ->New Web Site and select Dynamic Data Web Site template. Give it a name and select the location and language to be used. Click Ok button.

Step 2: Add data to your Web Site.

Copy paste pubs.mdf file that you want to use in your App_Data folder.

Step 3: Create a Data model using LINQ to SQL.

Right click on App_code and Add New LINQ to SQL Classes. On selecting the LINQ to SQL Classes the DataClasses.dbml opens up in your O/R Designer.

Step 4: Drag drop tables to Object Relational Designer.

Now drag drop Authors table on to the O/R Designer from server explorer and save DataClassses.dbml.

Step 5: Look what VS has created for you.

Note that there are two files DataClasses.dbml.layout and DataCalsses.designer.vb present under the .dbml file node.

Open DataCalsses.designer.vb, and you can see that there is a Partial Public Class DataClassesDataContext. This file also contains an entity class for Author table (Partial Public Class author).

Step 6: Register the data context in Global.asax file.

Open global.asax page and add the following lines of code in RegisterRoutes method.

VB code:

model.RegisterContext(GetType(AdventureWorksDataContext), _ New ContextConfiguration() With {.ScaffoldAllTables = True})

C# code:

model.RegisterContext(typeof(AdventureWorksDataContext), new ContextConfiguration() { ScaffoldAllTables = true });

Save the file.

Step 7: View the page in Browser

Now you can view default.aspx page using View in Browser. This will show you a link for Authors table.

Click on the table name and you will see a page with data from Authors Table. There is also readymade option for you to Edit, Delete and Insert new data.

Try this today and have fun!

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Web Development Tools

Tip #50: Did you know…How to absolute position the controls in Visual Studio Designer?

WebDevTools — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:32:41 GMT

Absolute positioning control(s) in the designer can seem confusing at first until you learn the visual cues. You can do one of the following two possible actions by dragging the control in the designer.

Re-parent the control
Change the controls position.

When you drag the body of the control, you are changing the parent of the control. You can see this because the cursor changes to the small arrow with a square box.

On the other hand, when you drag it by the white tag, you change the physical position of the control. You can see this because the cursor changes to the 4-way arrow and there is no square box.

Unfortunately, today the cursor shows a 4-way arrow when you hover over the body of a web control and that’s a known issue. It should be only a 4-way arrow when you a hover on the white tag and a standard arrow when you hover on the body. You will see the right behavior with HTML button.

Note: Additionally the first drop of the control always sets its parenting always, not its position.

Vinayabhushana GattamReddy
TM || Visual Web Developer

Tip #33: Did you know… How to create Nested Master Pages using VS 2008?

WebDevTools — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 03:26:16 GMT

VS 2008 and VWD 2008 both support Nested Master Pages which means you can have a Base Master page which would cater to the whole site and then you can further customize these Base Master Pages.

Here is how you do it:

1. Create a BaseMasterPage.master for the base look:

First we need to create a Base Master Page look, which will apply to the entire site. To do this you will have to Add New Item to your Web Site and Select Master Page Template. Let us name it BaseMasterPage.Master.

Let us say that our BaseMasterPage looks like this:

2. Create a NestedMasterPage.master based on the Base Master Page created above.

To do this right click on Solution Explorer of your web site and launch the Add New Item dialog.

In this dialog select Master Page Template and to make this Master page a Nested one, specify the parent Master page by checking the “Select master page” checkbox as shown below.

Click Add in the above dialog. This will automatically launch the “Select a Master Page Dialog” as shown below. In this dialog select your parent/base master page.

Notice that VS will now add a blank <asp:content> control inside the Nested Master Page and this content control can be further customized. This is the same BaseContentPlaceHolder which was available in the parent master page.

3. Overriding BaseContentPlaceHolder in NestedMasterPage.master.

To override the contents in NestedMasterPage, copy paste the following piece of code inside the BaseContentPlaceHolder

<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="BaseContentPlaceHolder" Runat="Server">
      <p>
        This is data from Nested Master Page.
       </p>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="ContentPlaceHolderInNestedMP" runat="server">

   </asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

</asp:Content>

At this stage, your NestedMasterPage will look like this. Also, note that we have added a New ContentPlaceHolder (ContentPlaceHolderInNestedMP) in the Nested Master Page.

4. Create content page based on the NestedMasterPage.master

To add a content page using the NestedMasterPage.master, all you need to do is select NestedMasterPage.Master in solution explorer, right-click and select “Add Content Page”. This will add a new content page with an empty ContentPlaceHolderInNestedMP, which could be overridden.

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip # 30: Did you know... Ajax Extender controls UI behaves differently in VS 2008 than in VS 2005

WebDevTools — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:12:00 GMT

In VS 2005, you can drag and drop an extender control anywhere on the design surface. However, in VS 2008, you can drop an extender only on an ASP control which the extender can extend its functionality. When you drag an extender and hover it over a control, if the control can support the extender, you would see the cursor turn into a plus (+) sign. If you hover an extender over the blank design surface, or over a control which is not supported by the extender, the cursor will turn into a stop sign which indicates that it can't be dropped at that position.

Another difference is, in VS 2005, an extender is shown in the design surface after being added to the page. However, at runtime, the extender is not shown at all. This makes it hard for developers to truly know how the page will look like at runtime when designing the page. In VS 2008, we have changed that behavior by completely hiding extenders in the design view. The user can recognize if a control is having an extender by checking if the control's smart tag has a little green icon shown.

Anh Phan

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #29: Did you know… How to enable Edit and Continue feature for Web Application Projects?

WebDevTools — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:06:59 GMT

If you want to edit your WAPs while debugging them, here is how you do it:

1. Check the “Enable Edit and Continue” checkbox in the Web Properties page.

2. Check the “Enable Edit and Continue” checkbox under Tools->Options->Debugging->Edit and Continue

These two setting will enable Edit and Continue as you debug your WAPs.

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #26: Did you know... How to have C# and VB.NET files inside your App_Code directory?

WebDevTools — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:13:00 GMT

If you are taking advantage of the App_Code folder to develop an ASP.NET WebSite some times you need to use code files that are written in different .NET languages. For example, you may want to use C# files and VB.NET files in the same web site:

To be able to do this you can use a feature of the compilation section in web.config to configure sub folders inside App_Code to be compiled separately.

<compilation debug="true">
    <codeSubDirectories>
        <add directoryName="VBFiles" />
    </codeSubDirectories>
</compilation>

Federico Silva Armas
SDET, ASP.NET QA Team

Tip #24: Did you know…You could display CSS/HTML errors as warnings or as errors?

WebDevTools — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:22:25 GMT

VS 2008 has this cool feature of downgrading any CSS/HTML errors to warnings. This is helpful when you want to separate out validation errors and are looking for what is actually stopping your build.

In VS 2008 the default behavior is to display any HTML/CSS errors as warnings as shown in the picture below. Note that warnings have a green squiggle.

The settings for this feature is available under Tools –>Options –>Text Editor –>HTML->Validation as shown below.

If you still want your CSS/HTML errors to show up as errors you can uncheck the as warnings (HTML, CSS) check box. By doing this, VS will display it as errors as shown below. Note that error have a red squiggle as shown below.

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #22: Did you know…How to improve performance of Page and Server Control Processing?

WebDevTools — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:49:47 GMT

Avoid unnecessary round trips to the server - You can use ASP.NET Ajax and partial page rendering.

ASP.NET Ajax - ASP.NET Ajax allows the developer to create web application in ASP.NET which can update data on the web page without a complete reload of the page.

Partial Page Rendering - Partial-page rendering relies on server controls in ASP.NET and on client functions in the Microsoft AJAX Library. You do not have to use the Microsoft AJAX Library to enable partial-page rendering, because this functionality is provided automatically when you use the ASP.NET AJAX server controls. However, you can use the APIs exposed in the client library for additional AJAX functionality. ASP.NET enables you to add partial-page rendering to new or existing ASP.NET Web pages without writing client script.

To get more information, see partial page rendering overview and ASP.Net Ajax.
Use the Page object's IsPostBack property to avoid unnecessary processing
Leave buffering on unless you have a specific reason to turn it off

Please take a look at Chapter 6 - Improving ASP.NET performance to learn more about best practices.

Thanks
Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer