Customizing Web Page Layout

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Layout Editor

You can modify many aspects of the web pages built with Iron Speed Designer, including page layout, the fields and controls used on a page, and the style sheets that provide a common style to your application’s web pages. You may wish to change your application’s look – the color scheme, fonts – or you may wish to change the layout of entire pages or the components created by Iron Speed Designer on those pages, tables, fields, etc. You can do all of this in Layout Editor.

A quick tour of the Layout Editor

Change page layout and other configuration options in the Layout Editor screen. The Live Preview screen shows your page with your actual data.

At heart, the Layout Editor screen in Iron Speed Designer is a code generator; your page is automatically updated to reflect your changes when you switch to Live Preview.

Feature	Use for…
Application Explorer	Select a page to edit.
Layout Editor	Customize page layout within the selected page section Drag databound controls from the Toolbox into the Layout Editor Change table and row styles (via the Property Sheet) See Using the Layout Editor and Toolbox to learn more.
Property Sheet	Configure control properties such as control type, formatting, appearance and so on Configure queries for controls on the page Configure styles Configure business logic such as button actions, initialization, validation and so on Customize code methods Almost anything you can do to a page or control except layout changes and html text can be done in the Property Sheet.
Toolbox	Drag databound fields, reports, forms and other objects from the Toolbox onto the Layout Editor. See Using the Layout Editor and Toolbox to learn more.
HTML Editor	Click the Edit button in the corner of a selected cell to open the HTML Editor to… Make localized style changes, such as font and color properties Add custom text, HTML, ASP.NET and other tags See Customizing Page Contents with the HTML Editor to learn more.

No HTML necessary

Don’t remember your HTML <table>, <tr> and <td> tags? Don’t worry; you do not need to know HTML! Just drag and drop controls within the Layout Editor and you’ll get a great looking page. Iron Speed Designer creates all the HTML so you don’t have to.

Live Preview shows your actual application

Quickly switch to live preview the see the actual page. No need to run the application and open another browser. Switch back and forth between Live Preview and Layout Editor. Switch to another page in Application Explorer and see the actual page. No more having to enter or remember long URLs.

Complete cell attribute control

Customize cells with any cell attribute (e.g., style or width) of your choosing. Select the cell, open the Tag Attributes dialog (Property Sheet, Styles, Cell…) and enter any table cell (<td>) attributes such as Class and Style. The attributes are used when creating your ASPX web page.

See Configuring Cell, Row and Table Styles for details.

Easy access to code customizations

Select a control in the Layout Editor and immediately see the relevant Code methods in the Property Sheet. No hunting around for which function to change! All relevant methods are shown.

Make application-wide style changes in your application’s style sheet

You can quickly and easily make application-wide changes to color, font, and other style information. In Iron Speed Designer’s Application Explorer, select your application’s style sheet (typically Styles.css). Modify any of the font, color, and other properties you wish.

See Customizing Style Sheets and Page Styles for details.

Make global layout changes for newly created applications in page styles

Use page styles to change the functionality, look and feel for newly created applications. Page styles provide the underlying look-and-feel for components created by Iron Speed Designer, including the colors, fonts, positioning, and other stylistic elements. Each page style is composed of a set of XSL template files that provide the HTML for individual data-bound components, as well as certain elements of your application's web pages. Note, however, that changing page styles is a very advanced capability and you should only attempt this if you’re a very experience and confident Iron Speed Designer user.

See Customizing Style Sheets and Page Styles for details.

Use your favorite ASPX editor to further customize ASPX pages

This option offers significant potential to make the page your own, allowing you to reposition the HTML / ASPX. You can add additional HTML, remove tags, and reposition tags. You can add any layout and style modification directly to the ASPX pages and ASCX controls in situations where it is acceptable that the page be overwritten each time the application is built. Cosmetic and behavioral changes can be made in any web page editor, such as Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, one page at a time.

Note: Changes made directly to the actual ASPX or ASCX pages will be lost when Iron Speed Designer updates these pages. For example, you will lose your page customizations if you subsequently modify the page in Layout Editor or otherwise update the customized portion of the page. You may want to save your changes in a separate folder so you can reapply them to your application.