Sometimes when a page loads you'll want the user to be able to see the which fields are required. This is normally done by presenting an asterisk next to the fields that need to be populated/selected.

The RequiredFieldValidator does not automatically perform validation upon load, but here's some code that will allow you to do so:

I usually put this in the OnPreRender event handler as at that point everything is done processing on the page.

foreach (IValidator validator in Validators)
{
    if (validator is RequiredFieldValidator)
   {
     validator.Validate();
   }
}

This will ensure that the page's required field validators are validated when the page loads. Therefore giving the user the insight into the required fields.

Unfortunately I don't have time to go through and figure out why the Always Visible control wont work with a user control. Although I assume it has something to do with the HTML DOM. Some relationship in there is probably hard coded or assumed.

Here's what I was trying to do:

I want to have an always visible control that had some items in it (lets say a bunch of links). I wanted that to be in a user control. I wanted that user control to be the "always visible" control. So I set the TargetID to the user control and ... NO DICE. Doesn't work. I get a cannot load behavior ID or something like that. Its a JavaScript error, and I could figure it out if I had time, but unfortunately the project I'm on doesn't permit.

I even attempted to get around this by putting all of the ASP.NET AJAX into a user control and then add the user control to the page. NOPE, didn't work.

Solution

This is kind of a hacky solution, but it works. You can get this to work by putting all of your controls into a user control. Then wrap your user control in a panel. Like so:

<ajaxToolkit:AlwaysVisibleControlExtender
    ID="avce" runat="server"
    VerticalSide="bottom"
    TargetControlID="scrollingPanel"
    VerticalOffset="10"
    HorizontalSide="Right"
    HorizontalOffset="10"
    ScrollEffectDuration=".1" />
<asp:Panel runat="server" ID="scrollingPanel">
    <uc1:MyUserControl ID="myUc" runat="server"  />
</asp:Panel>

This will allow you to still use a user control, but in my opinion, its kind of hacky. If and when I find time to work around this I'll post an update. If anyone else knows of a fix, please let me know.

I recently had a problem that plagued me the last couple of weeks.

Problem: When I pressed F5 or CTRL + F5 or even "View in Browser" from Visual Studio (in an ASP.NET project) Internet Explorer would load. If I had any breakpoints set, the debugger would break, and then I could continue after debugging (or, if I didn't debug the project would continue to load as normal -- in Internet Explorer). Once the project continued to load in Internet Explorer (IE), IE would HANG.

I'm not talking a 5-10 second load. I'm talking 2-3 minutes!! After the initial load, the application would load as expected. I could hit refresh, everything and it would load as expected. Unfortunately this isn't a feasible solution when I need to debug on a normal basis and I cannot be waiting 2-3 minutes for the debugger to start.

The weird about this is... if I opened IE and went to ANY WEBSITE the site would load instantly. The problem was only with ASP.NET projects, making me thing it had to do with the local cassini web server.

Resolution: After some reading, I came to the conclusion that it could be related to a proxy server. I took a look, NOPE, no proxy server here. So then I started poking around with the system. There were no event logs for anything relating browser or .NET issues. I could not find anything related to this issue, other than a couple people having the SAME exact problem.

On a fluke I decided to hit F5, and then while the enormous load time was taking place I started FireFox. I copied the URL from IE (which looked something like: http://localhost:49696/default.aspx) and then posted it into the address bar of FireFox and hit Enter. To my amazement, the page loaded immediately. But  IE was still hanging, and waiting.

After changing some settings in the Internet Options panel of IE I decided to reset IE's settings (see below).

After resetting everything, everything started working again. I'm not sure what setting had started this behavior, but I do know that something in my Internet Settings got changed. Over the next week I'm going to attempt to recreate the issue, and if I'm able to, I'll post the solution here.

But if you're having this same problem, reset your settings in IE!

I was perusing the HTML 5 Spec and I ran across the HTML 5 differences from HTML 4.

There are a couple things that caught my eye immediately: new input types, datagrid, datalist, and also how the structure of the div element has changed. The thing that really sparked my interest was the input types.

HTML 5 is proposing that we have the following new input types:

• datetime
• datetime-local
• date
• month
• week
• time
• number
• range
• email
• url

In short, the user agent (in this case, the browser) will be responsible for providing the interface to which we can use the said input types. Therefore Internet Explorer, Fire Fox, Safari, etc will be responsible for rendering the UI for the input type that you choose.

Say wha?!? Yeah, finally, no more writing ajax controls for basic UI, and hopefully there is some type of validation built into the spec (but I haven't gotten that far into reading it).

Links for ya'll:

HTML 5 Spec

HTML 5 Differences from HTML 4

Jeremy D. Miller has a great post on keeping source code where it belongs. The thought process behind this is that code should be where YOU would assume it would be. If its data access code, it should be in a project/namespace that is something like Data Access or DAL or Data or something that represents the lower layer of the architecture. If its the business rules/tasks the files should be in a project called Business Rules, or BLL, or Tasks, or something similar. It makes sense, just think about this -- if you walk into a business and are given a project that was created by another developer and you're getting a ADO.NET Exception, you'd expect to find the code Data Access code in a Data Access layer, NOT in the code behind. I should not have to hunt down where you put your data access code.

We're talking about basic separation of concerns. The thing is, many developers lack these concepts because they're under the assumption of "I can write this the correct way, and it will take me 2 weeks, or I can do it quickly and it will take me 2 days." This may not matter when the application is running for a few months, but when you are asked to change the data provider from SQL Server to Oracle, or remove the web service calls and replace them with RPC calls, you're going to find yourself in a world of hurt because you didn't set everything up correctly. At this point they have amounted a large amount of Technical Debt.

He also noted that a large number of people were now using Ruby On Rails (RoR) as their development platform and I won't deny that I also believe that Ruby/Rails is huge right now. Tons of shops are running RoR and even Martin Fowler said on Hansel Minutes that ThoughtWorks was doing about 40% (or more) of their business with Ruby. The key point Jeremy brought up is that "RoR forces web developers into a bit of a straight jacket, but that's a good thing in a way." I completely agree. RoR enforces a consistent source code tree layout which allows for developers to easily find there way around a project. "Developer A" can create a project with RoR and then "Developer B" can come along and take a look at it and be familiar with the code layout and structure. The RoR community has agreed that this is the basic way to organize a project and it seems to be working for them.

So what about .NET? Enter Tree Surgeon. Right now, its a stand alone application, but in its near future it should be implemented as a template in Visual Studio 2005/2008. So what is it? It's a application that will create that straight jacket that Jeremy spoke of. It gives the developer a basic set up of layers, unit tests, code coverage and build script. It builds the entire source code directory and allows you to build on top of it. The source code layout follows a white paper written by Mike Roberts. I've been using it for quite awhile and I'm one of the developers on the project. I recently updated the source to allow creation of Visual Studio 2005 projects. Please note, this is only on the source and has not been reflected on the production release. Download the source, run it and then choose a application name, and generate the project source directory tree. Open the solution file and your application is ready to go.

The best part is that its easy to integrate existing projects into this format. I've done it quite a few times to allow for easy integration into my clients CI environment.

If you have any requests for Tree Surgeon, please visit the Issue Tracker page and submit and issue.

Enjoy!