Advice on design approach and principles

[Mr Gordonz]

Hi All,

I am building a site that will be used by different types of users, and each
type of user will do similar, but substantially different, things. My
question is a general one: what is the "best" (or at least a good) approach
to the design of the site.

For example:

1. I want to display a menu/nav bar at the top of the page, and while some
options are common to all types of user, some are unique to one user type.
At the moment I am using a User Control, and it has three separate Panel
controls. In the Load event (of the User Control), I check the Usertype
(stored in a Session variable), and display the Panel which has the menu
options relevant to that user type (and also hide the other panels). It
works just fine, but it doesn't seem a very "elegant" solution.

2. All user types can go to an "Edit My Account" page. But the info that
is stored in the database for each user type is different: different fields
in
different tables, therefore different controls on the Account page. Which
is
better: completely separate pages for each user type (easy to do, but lots
of pages) vs. one page for all, and use my trick of hidden panels (less
pages, more code). I suspect there are other approaches, but I'm not
sure what they might be.

I am interested to hear from anyone who has ideas/opinions/experience
regarding this "question". I realize that I am really asking a very broad
question about solution architecture, but I am now 35 years old and I don't
have the time (or the money!) to go back to Uni and study, so I'll happily
settle for some quick tips and pointers from the experts! ;-)

Thanks in advance,

Cheers,

Mr Gordonz

 

[Steve C. Orr, MCSD]

1) I think this is a very elegant solution you've come up with. This is the
way I would have done it. I can think of other ways you could have done it
but none that I would consider "better."

2) Without knowing more about your app, the panel approach seems reasonable,
especially since it keeps things pretty consistent with the coding style of
your menu control.