Future Enhancements

Future Enhancements

The code shown in Listing 5-4 is marginally functional, and of course there is much room for improvement. First, the appearance of the page leaves a bit to be desired. A more flashy version of this Web site will appear in future chapters. Figure 5-42 shows the main page of the Web site with some additional flair.

Figure 5-42: A prettier version of the bike blog

This version uses some of the cascading style sheets features covered in Chapter 3. In addition, a simple header image was added to the page. These changes will be used in some examples shown in upcoming chapters.

Anyone who knows anything about weblogs will note a large number of deficiencies with the bike blog shown in this chapter. First, anyone can add an entry. There is no security associated with the site, and when blog entries are saved, they just use my name. Another problem is that the site does not allow comments; I might want anyone entering a comment to register on the site. The security issues will be addressed in Chapter 7.

Another problem is that, although using the GridView control is one possible way to display the entries on the main screen, there are others. For example, a user control, which is in many ways a mini-page, allows for a more logical structure, and a page can contain multiple instances of a particular user control. Authoring user controls and server controls will be covered in Chapter 6, "Custom Controls."

One other improvement, beyond the scope of this book, would be to add a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed from the blog. This would allow users to read the bike blog from one of the dozens of RSS aggregators without having to visit the page.