[Sigia-l] ASP.net (was Designers and Developers)

[Dimitri Glazkov]

Nancy,

ASP.NET is an awesome framework for Web development and it offers a
wealth of capabilities and extreme flexibility for developers.

It also introduces a much more solid concept of code encapsulation,
which allows developers to move details of implementation to the
compiled code. 

This concept was designed to provide a way to separate the function of a
page from its appearance -- your classic separation of content and
context.

Unfortunately, the watershed between those two was not drawn in the
right place. ASP.NET's entire rendering library was build on the notion
that library's rendering elements (Html and Web controls) simulate
actual HTML elements. More complex controls (such as DataGrid or
HtmlTable) may contain multiple nested tags. Each of these controls,
when rendered, emits actual HTML code.

Why is this wrong? Because the developers of controls now have a say on
what markup will appear on your page. And, as Chris correctly stated,
this means that the responsibilities of design and coding are getting
mixed up in all the wrong places.

If you had a chance to look at Whidbey, the upcoming new version of
ASP.NET, you will see this paradigm taken to new heights. In ASP.NET
2.0, there are built-in controls that inject hundreds of lines of code
into your page. Steve Ballmer may have said "Developers" 39 times in a
row, but I've yet to hear him say "Process" with the same gusto.

What should've been done is building the framework in such a way that
content is emitted in XML, which could be then shaped into desired
context using XSLT.

That way, we wouldn't have had to worry about mixing developer/designer
responsibilities.

Similarly, we wouldn't have had to worry about application developers
designing the presentation UI and HTML being hard-coded into the logic
of the software.

:DG<

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nancy [mailto:nmccrave at rochester.rr.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 6:52 AM
> To: lists; 'SIGIA-L'
> Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] ASP.net (was Designers and Developers)
> 
> "Developers and designers end up working very closely 
> together when using
> tag libraries such as ASP.NET that render html/css/js from 
> the backend. Not
> only is the rendered output horrid, but now the developer is 
> all mixed up in
> design issues and the designer is all mixed up in user 
> controls, server
> controls, and data manipulation."
> 
> Could you elaborate more on the ASP.NET issues you've 
> experienced?  I've
> just had a presentation on this from one of our developers 
> and I'd like to
> know more of what I can expect.  His hope was that designers 
> could learn the
> tag libraries to some extent, but I'm not sure regaining 
> control over the
> design is as simple as that. Thanks!
> 
> Nancy McCrave
> 
> 
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