Configure Start Page and Other Special Pages

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Tools, Configure Start Page...

You can quickly put a few finishing touches on your application by setting its start page, error page, and related pages.

ConfigureStartPage

You can configure several special application pages, including the start page and error page.

The fields in this dialog are editable so you can add your own URL parameters or specify a completely different page such as http://www.ironspeed.com.  Note that Iron Speed Designer does not validate the page paths you select.  You can link to anything you want, including relative paths to other applications on your own server.

Page

Function

Start page

This page redirects the application user to your application.  This file can be modified to send an application user to a specific page within the application.

The initial default page is Default.aspx, which does not do any processing or redirecting and is not intended to be seen by the application user in this form.  You can modify the Default.aspx file directly, or you can change the default page URL to select a different page as the default.  We recommend selecting a Table Report page for simplicity.

Error page

This page is displayed if another page encounters certain application errors.

This page is displayed if the web server encounters HTTP errors.  (See ...\<App>\Web.config for a list of errors which result in this page being displayed.)

This is a completely self-contained error page.  Each application’s Web.config file is set to return this page to a client if the client's HTTP request could not be served successfully.  This is to avoid the 'yellow screen' if an application doesn’t build or compile properly, or a non-existent page is requested, etc.

Forbidden page

The forbidden page is displayed when an application user tries to access a page they are not authorized to view because they do not have the correct access privileges.  If the user types in the URL directly after signing in, the user will be redirected to Forbidden_Page.aspx if they are not allowed to access the page.

Sign in page

These files implement the Sign In page.

Forgot User page

This page is created when the user selects an email address for the user table during Application security setup. This page allows the user to request that their sign in information be sent to them by email.

Send User info

This page is created when the user has a Forgot User page. It is the template for the email message containing the sign in information.

Sign out page

These files implement the Signed Out Confirmation page.

Role-Based Security and Start Pages

A page created with Iron Speed Designer can be secured to be accessible only to signed-in users or by those users that have a certain role.  When an application user accesses one of these pages, the application redirects the user to a sign in page, and if the user successfully logs in and has the required role, the user is then redirected to the page they originally intended to use.  For example, if the user saves a bookmark to the ShowCustomersTable.aspx page and accesses this in a future session, the ShowCustomersTable.aspx page checks to see if sign-in is required.  If it is required, the user is redirected to the sign in page and redirected back upon a successful login.

The start page of an application should be set to default page that you would like your users to see when they first visit the application.  Just as in the example above, when the user accesses the application, the default page checks to see if a sign in is required, redirects to it for login information, and redirects back automatically upon a successful login.

This approach of showing the sign in page on demand, and redirecting back to the requested page provides many advantages including the fact that a bookmarked URL of a secure page continues to work as expected.  The developer and user are freed from worrying about whether the user is signed in or not within the business logic of a secure page.  Furthermore, the start page of the application can be configured normally without worrying about whether the user is signed in or not.

If the start page of the application is configured to be the sign-in page, then the default start page of the application is effectively undefined.  When a user accesses an application, they will be shown a sign-in page.  When the user logs in successfully, the user should be taken to another page, but which one?  You could change the URL of the OK button on the Sign In page to redirect to some page.  If you do this, then if a user visits a bookmarked URL such as ShowCustomersTable.aspx in the example above, the user will not be redirected to this bookmarked page, but instead redirected to the hard-coded URL.  This would obviously be very confusing to application users.

Iron Speed recommends that application start pages be set to what you consider the first page of the application regardless of application security.  The sign-in page itself should not be the application’s start page.

Mobile Start Page Redirection

When an application user points their browser to the application’s root directory (e.g. http://www.yourcompany.com/MyApp1/), Iron Speed Designer automatically redirects to either the Web or Mobile start page.  The actual start page selected is determined by the HTTP_USER_AGENT value automatically sent by the web browser. Iron Speed Designer will redirect to the Mobile start page if the HTTP_USER_AGENT contains any of the strings of characters separated by pipes in the application’s web.config file:

<add key="MobileUserAgents" value="android|iphone|ipod|iemobile|windows ce|windows mobile|windows phone os|blackberry|palm|skyfire|symbian|symbos" />

You can remove any of these strings and add your own.

The default MobileUserAgents value is intended to identify the major smartphones currently being produced. Although many of these devices have not been tested with Iron Speed Designer, it can be expected that they will work better with our small Mobile pages than our large Web pages.

You can determine the User Agent string being sent by your browser at the url http://whatsmyuseragent.com/