Chapter 3 Web Form Layout

Overview

Web Form developers tend to be split into two groups. In the first group are developers who came from an HTML and JavaScript background and moved from Web page development to Web Forms development, adding knowledge of server-side programming along the way. The second group of Web Form developers is smart-client or server-side developers who moved to Web Forms development because that was where all the cool development was happening. I fall into the latter group. I know enough HTML to develop fairly complex forms and create a structure, whereas a gifted designer can make my complex Web Forms look pretty. I know my limits, so this chapter will in no way endeavor to make you a complete Web Form designer. Entire books have been written on the topic. Instead, this chapter will give you the knowledge you need to take full advantage of several of the tools that Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 has to offer, including Master Pages and the Wizard control.

One of the controversies in the Web Forms development world involves the use of HTML tables vs. pure cascading style sheets design. As with most such disagreements, the middle ground is where I believe most developers should stand. Are HTML tables overused and abused? Sure. Have cascading style sheets reached the point where perhaps 98 percent of the visitors to your Web site will use browsers that offer adequate support for cascading style sheets? Sure. The problem with abandoning HTML tables entirely is that there are some tasks that HTML tables support better than cascading style sheets. One of these tasks is the layout of forms. Although I can imagine laying out a form using pure cascading style sheets, it is something I have neither done nor expect to do anytime soon.

Note 

The next two sections of this chapter, "HTML Tables 101" and "Cascading Style Sheets 101," provide information that is important for anyone creating Web Forms applications in ASP.NET 2.0. However, most of this information is not ASP.NET-specific. If you are very experienced in HTML and cascading style sheets, I encourage you to skip ahead to the section titled "Themes and Skins."