Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Intelligent Master-Detail, Grid Templates, etc.

The new update has been released.

The following enhancements were included:

  1. Code generator will automatically detect presence of Visual Studio 2010 and use included Web Developer Web Server to run generated ASP.NET projects. This feature allows using the code generator on computers with the new Visual Studio 2010. If both, Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 are installed then the newer web server is launched. Note that the applications are still generated as ASP.NET 3.5 web sites. Support for ASP.NET 4.0 is expected to be available in June of 2010.
     
  2. Master-detail support has been enhanced with Auto Hide feature. The JavaScript client library of Web Site Factory applications will automatically hide detail records if a master view does not have a selected record.  This will effect classic, stacked, and tabbed page layouts automatically created by the code generator.  The first two master-detail layouts will display only a grid of master records up until a selection is made. The tabbed layout will hide the detail tabs until a user makes a selection of a master record.
     
    The user interface elements that present the detail records will also disappear if a user is creating a new master record or if a selected master record has been deleted.
     
    The new library will also eliminate server requests if the master view has refreshed without the selected key being changed. This significantly improves overall performance of the generated ASP.NET+AJAX web sites. 
     
    Intelligent master-detail data presentation eliminates hours of complicated coding and make presentation of complex data layouts easy within the boundaries of a single web page.
     
  3. Grid views now support three types of custom row templates. If controller Customers has a grid view with id grid1 then the JavaScript client library will be looking for templates with the following names: Customers_grid1, Customers_grid1_selected, and Customers_grid1_new.

    The first template will be used to format the row in edit mode. The second template will be used to format the selected row. The third template will be used to format the new row. Learn more about custom grid templates at http://blog.codeontime.com/2008/09/custom-templates-for-ajax-grids-in-data.html.

We will post video tutorials explaining these features on our YouTube channel.