asp menu control - I anyone using them?

[Andrew Meador]

I am setting up a web site and have thus far been using a sitemap
file with a menu control in a masterpage and using CSS for formatting.
This seems to be a nice approach that should work well. However, I am
having problems. I have the menu working well where the selected/hover/
regular items are formatted differently. But, I don't see how to set a
style for previously visited menu items. I already have a post on this
issue, but now I have another. There appears to be a hotfix out from
microsoft (KB969612) that fixes an ASP/.NET issue where dynamic
menuitems don't show up correctly in IE8.

I figured this out after doing a lot of work on this site, and once
I uploaded it to my webhosting service (network solutions) they do not
have the hotfix installed on their web servers. So, I have to wait for
them to apply this hotfix to their servers (if they ever do), or
significantly redesign my menu system for the site.

Is this typical? Is this webhosting service slacking? Is there not
that many people using the asp menu control thus the webhosting
companies are not very aware of the bug? Although this path to menu
development sounds good, is it problematic to the point that people
are just not using it and favoring another approach?

Please advise.

Thanks!

 

[Patrice]

Hello,

So, I have to wait for
them to apply this hotfix to their servers (if they ever do), or
significantly redesign my menu system for the site.

Tweaking your CSS just a bit should allow to fix this. See if
http://weblogs.asp.net/mhildreth/archive/2009/01/26/testing.aspx works for
you...

 

[Andrew Meador]

Hello,


Tweaking your CSS just a bit should allow to fix this. See ifhttp://weblogs.asp.net/mhildreth/archive/2009/01/26/testing.aspxworks for
you...

Thanks! I used the CSS fix to get this working.

But, to my other questions - is this method not being used a lot (menu
control that is)? Is Network Solutions unusual in their field in that
they do not have the hotfix installed on their web servers? I would
think if many people had been using the menu control, that they would
have put the hotfix in place by now. I am new to web dev and this is
the first commercial web host I've dealt with, but they seem large and
reputable. Maybe not?

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Andrew

 

[Patrice]

But, to my other questions - is this method not being used a lot (menu

control that is)?

It's always hard to say (try perhaps to see if it is discussed often but
also it could be frequently used and cause no problem or be unfrequently
used and cause numerous problems so it's always hard to find out the actual
situation from just what you see on the net and I'm generally reluctant at
drawing these kind of conclusions).

As a rough indicator :
"asp:menu" runat : 9 110 pages found in google
"asp:gridview" runat : 65 300 pages in google

So it seems that the asp:menu tag is discussed about 7 times less than the
gridview (more than 2000000 wihtout the runat attribute as an example of how
search are to be taken with care as menu is likely frequently used as a page
name so the hit count raises).

Is Network Solutions unusual in their field in that
they do not have the hotfix installed on their web servers? I would
think if many people had been using the menu control, that they would
have put the hotfix in place by now. I am new to web dev and this is
the first commercial web host I've dealt with, but they seem large and
reputable. Maybe not?

Don't know. Is this a feedback you gave them ? I can understand that a web
hosting company can't necessarily see these kind of problem. Developpers
using their services are likely the first one who'll notice this (they just
host sites, they don't develop).

Also a web hosting company likely take extra care about updates as there is
also a risk to break something that runs...

What matters would be IMO how they react once they are informed about this
problem ?