User Interface

The page header is displayed at the top of every page in a web application. By default, the application namespace is displayed in the header, along with the standard theme logo.

Let’s customize the header.

Changing Header Text and Icon

Start the web app generator. Click on the project name, select settings, and press Features. In the Page Header text box, paste the following:

<span style="color:darkred;">Code On Time</span>

Press Finish and continue to regenerate the web app. When complete, click on the project name and press Develop to open the project in Visual Studio.

In the Solution Explorer, drop your logo image into ~\App_Themes\MyCompany folder.

Next, right-click on ~\App_Themes\MyCompany and press Add | Style Sheet. Leave the default name and press OK to create the file “StyleSheet.css”.

Replace the contents with the following:

div#PageHeaderBar {
    background-image: url(colorlogo.png);
    height:42px;
    padding-top:30px;
}
    div#PageHeaderBar span {
        margin-left: 110px;
        font-size:32px;
    }

Placing a Custom User Control in the Header

Sometimes it may be necessary to place dynamic content in the header area. Let’s create custom user control that will be displayed in the header on the Customers page.

Start the Project Designer. In the Project Explorer, right-click on Customers page node and press New Container.

Press OK to save the container with default settings. In the Project Explorer, right-click on Customers / c101 container and press Rename.

Change the container name to “page”, and press Enter key to save.

User controls in the container “page” will be placed in special placeholders on the page when the app is generated. The name of the control instance determines the placeholder.

Right-click on Customers / page, and press New Control.

Next to the User Control lookup on the form, click the New User Control icon.

Assign a name to the new user control.

Press OK to create the new user control. Press OK to save the properties of the control instance and have it added to the Customers / page container.

Right-click on Customers / page / control1 – CustomerHeader and press Rename.

Change the name to “header” and press Enter key to apply the change.

On the toolbar, press Browse. When generation is complete, navigate to the Customers page. The page will look like the picture below if there are no style sheet rules affecting the header area.

Dynamically Updating the Page Header

Let’s change the custom user control to make it display the primary key value from the selected data row of the Customers master data view.

Right-click on Customers / page / header – CustomerHeader and press Edit in Visual Studio.

Replace the existing code base after the <%@ Control %> element with the following:

<asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanel1" runat="server">
    <ContentTemplate>
        <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" style="margin-left:120px;"
            Text="Get Customer Info" OnClick="Button1_Click" />
        <asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label>
    </ContentTemplate>
</asp:UpdatePanel>

Right-click anywhere in the file, and press View Code. Add the following method:

C#:

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Control dataViewExtender = Parent.NamingContainer
        .FindControl("PageContentPlaceHolder").FindControl("view1Extender");
    Label1.Text = ((MyCompany.Web.DataViewExtender)dataViewExtender).SelectedValue;
}

Visual Basic:

Protected Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
    Dim dataViewExtender As Control = Parent.NamingContainer.
        FindControl("PageContentPlaceholder").FindControl("view1Extender")
    Label1.Text = CType(dataViewExtender, MyCompany.Web.DataViewExtender).SelectedValue
End Sub

Save the file. The event handler will respond to a click on the button “Button1”. First, it will find the instance of “view1Extender”. Next, the selected value will be copied to the label “Label1”.

Switch back to the browser. Navigate to the Customers page, and notice that the header text has been replaced with a button and a label.

Select a customer, and press Get Customer Info button. The label will be updated with the selected Customer ID.

Globalization is the process of designing and developing applications that function for multiple cultures. Localization is the process of customizing your application for a given culture and locale. The topics in this section describe how to create ASP.NET web applications that can be adapted to different languages and cultures.

Learn more about globalization and localization of ASP.NET web applications at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c6zyy3s9.aspx.

Globalization

Code On Time web app generator allows explicit definition of globalization options in the Project Wizard.

Each application has a default culture. Unlimited edition of Code On Time allows specifying additional cultures. The browser culture will be detected and used, if available. The user may also manually specify the culture using the Language selector dropdown in the top right corner of the web app.

Localization

At run-time, the client library automatically replaces text elements wrapped in “localization tokens” when the culture is different from the default. The translations are stored as text constants in resource files. The client library matches the culture to the end of the text file name. For example, when the culture is changed to Canadian English, the client library will find translations in files that end with “en-CA.txt”.

For example, let’s examine the standard Welcome user control that is present in every web app. Notice that each text block is wrapped in a descriptive word surrounded by the carat (^) character.

<div style="padding-left: 8px">
    <div class="ParaInfo">
        ^SignInInstruction^Sign in to access the protected site content.^SignInInstruction^
    </div>
    <div class="ParaHeader">
        ^SignInHeader^Instructions^SignInHeader^
    </div>
    <div class="ParaText">
        ^SignInPara1^Two standard user accounts are automatically created when application is initialized if membership option has been selected for this application.^SignInPara1^
    </div>

    <div class="ParaText">
        ^SignInPara2^The administrative account <b>admin</b> is authorized to access all areas of the web site and membership manager. The standard <b>user</b> account is allowed to access all areas of the web site with the exception of membership manager.^SignInPara2^
    </div>

    <div class="ParaText">
        ^SignInPara3^Move the mouse pointer over the link <i>Login to this web site</i> on the right-hand side at the top of the page and sign in with one of the accounts listed below.^SignInPara3^
    </div>

    <div class="ParaText">
        <div style="border: solid 1px black; background-color: InfoBackground; padding: 8px; float: left;">
            ^AdminDesc^Administrative account^AdminDesc^:<br />
            <b title="User Name">admin</b> / <b title="Password">admin123%</b>
            <br />
            <br />
            ^UserDesc^Standard user account^UserDesc^:<br />
            <b title="User Name">user</b> / <b title="Password">user123%</b>
        </div>
        <div style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 8px"></div>
    </div>
</div>

Let’s provide our own translations for the “en-CA” culture that will replace the text wrapped in tags.

Customizing Localization

Start the web app generator and click on the project name. Select Settings, and then click on Globalization and Localization. In the Supported Culture Sets text box, enter the following:

Press Finish and regenerate the web app. When complete, click on the project name and press Open to open the project folder. In the search box, type in “en-CA.txt”. This will reveal all translation files for the “en-CA” culture.

Open the file “Welcome.ascx.en-CA.txt”. Notice that each element is wrapped in named tags surrounded by the carat (^) symbol. The client library will match the tags with those in the Welcome user control and replace the text at run-time.

Make the highlighted changes:

Save the file, and switch to the application open in the browser. Refresh the Home page. Use the Language dropdown in the top-right corner to change to English (Canada). Note that the changes made previously have been applied to the text in the Welcome control on the right side of the page.

In addition to any text translations, any money or date formatting for the culture will be used as well. If the culture supports right-to-left, the website will be formatted accordingly.

Preserving Localization Between Code Generation Library Updates

Code generation library updates automatically replace the previous versions of the code generation files. A backup of the web app can be restored from [My Documents]\Code OnTime\Backup when it happens. You can create a copy of your localizations and restore them after each update.

You can also submit the completed localization file sets to Code On Time for inclusion in the general distribution of the code generation library. The localization file sets will be shared with the community and will get installed automatically with each update. If you have localizations to contribute, please zip up the files and submit a ticket.