Newbie survey: just a scripting language?

[Brian]

Well, here's the background. I'm coming from the world of ColdFusion, where
page layout was an entirely manual process. Now I'm looking at .NET for the
first time. I have a great background in OOP, dhtml, css, etc. But not
..NET.

I'm tasked with revamping some very primitive looking ASP.NET 2.0 pages.
This is a drag'n'dropped website. There are a couple of images to break
things up, I guess. But bottomline, it looks like frontpage collided with
clipart.

As a newbie, I'm not sure which direction to go with it. Should I skip
Microsoft's controls or try to customize them for a better look and feel?
Can they be customized with impunity? For example, if a form was submitted
with an error, can I beautify the error message on a layer, with a graphical
element, some context sensitive help retrieved from a database, and some
dhtml thrown in for kicks? I know I could do this just scripting. But are
the form controls this versatile?

Does anyone use ASP just as a scripting language?

Thanks

 

[John Timney \( MVP \)]

Its hard to actually code well in asp.net by following the approaches your
probably familiar with in asp or cold fusion.

Stick with the basic controls wherever you can - it makes coding much
faster, and take a look at things like master pages and themes to
standardize your layout. The controls are probably versatile to do what you
need, and you can wrap them into new controls to make them do what they dont
do by default.

Best place to start as a newbie is the quickstart:
http://www.asp.net/quickstart/aspnet/

 

[Kevin Spencer]

Hi Brian,

With ASP.Net, you are completely free to make your app behave however you
want. You can cuatomize controls, and even create your own. In fact, you can
do literally everything with it. It's as low- or high-level as you want it
to be.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Who is Mighty Abbott?
A twin turret scalawag.