loading and dumping controls dynamically

[news.microsoft.com]

I'm strongly considering abandoning the one-physical-file-per-page model and
going with an arcitecture that simply loads content from classes
dynamically. There will be only one page that a user will go to, and all
variation from navigation will come from AJAX calls to load and replace
content in a main frame.

.... so my concern with this is, perhaps the browsers will leak memory or do
something obscurely wierd with enough loading and unloading of controls
client side. Has anyone else tried this approach, have any warnings to share
about doing things this way?

Paul

 

[Mark Rae]

I'm strongly considering abandoning the one-physical-file-per-page model
and going with an arcitecture that simply loads content from classes
dynamically. There will be only one page that a user will go to, and all
variation from navigation will come from AJAX calls to load and replace
content in a main frame.

... so my concern with this is, perhaps the browsers will leak memory or
do something obscurely wierd with enough loading and unloading of controls
client side. Has anyone else tried this approach, have any warnings to
share about doing things this way?

I guess the first question is: why...?

 

[George Ter-Saakov]

Leaks will be the problem even if you have more than one page. If leaks
happens then it will stay there even if you navigate to other page. Until
you close browser.

Here is why it's not the best choice to have single page (url)

1. People like to put pages into their favorites.
2. People like to send links.
3. People like to hit back button


with 100% AJAXyfing application you will prevent people from using every
feature they got accustomed to.
It will be a shooting yourself if it's an Internet application. More
tolerable if it's Intranet application.

I can tell from experience that even pure ASP.NET with their only POST way
of submitting the form is a big problem in Internet application. My
customers simply do not like that when they click "Back" button they get "Do
you want to resubmit data" warning from IE.

Just stick with a reasonable mix of AJAX and regular ASP.NET development.




George.

 

[PJ6]

I would disagree with 1 and 2 for an application requiring login /
authentication for the whole site. You're not going to be able to go back to
the place you were a day later using a link, and you won't be able to share
that location with others, either.

I agree, though, about the BACK button.

Thanks for your take on memory leaking. Looking at it that way, I probably
won't worry about it.

Paul

 

[PJ6]

I guess the first question is: why...?

One file per page may work well for anyone who wants to bang out HTML for a
run of the mill website, but for "applications" this is poor design because
it breaks the abstraction layer between the UI runtime and the physical file
system.

My web apps are typically rendered purely through the object model (compiled
code), and all text content is read from a database; there is very little
pre-rendered HTML or javascript. From an application standpoint, especially
a large one, this approach is so, so much more maintainable, and the
performance is also stunningly better. My move to get rid of page file
references completely will be my attempt to express this design pattern in
its purest form.

Paul

 

[Mark Rae]

One file per page may work well for anyone who wants to bang out HTML for
a run of the mill website, but for "applications" this is poor design
because it breaks the abstraction layer between the UI runtime and the
physical file system.

??? How on earth does it do that...???

My web apps are typically rendered purely through the object model
(compiled code), and all text content is read from a database; there is
very little pre-rendered HTML or javascript. From an application
standpoint, especially a large one, this approach is so, so much more
maintainable, and the performance is also stunningly better. My move to
get rid of page file references completely will be my attempt to express
this design pattern in its purest form.

Best of luck, then...