Customizing Web Page Layout

You can modify the web pages generated by Iron Speed Designer, the design themes that are used to create your application’s web pages, and the style sheets that provide a common style to the web pages.  The ASPX web pages generated by Iron Speed Designer are CSS 2.0 and XHTML 1.0 compliant.  In addition to modifying web page layout using the Design tab in Iron Speed Designer, you can:

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 generated by Iron Speed Designer on those pages, tables, fields, etc.  As with many things in Iron Speed Designer, there are several ways to change the stylistic and layout elements of web pages generated by Iron Speed Designer, depending on what you are attempting to do.

Approach

Uses

Toolbox controls and components

Best for:  Creating sophisticated page layouts with database-connected components, such as tables, records, fields, and filters.

Not good for:  Changing any aspect of the application-wide look-and-feel, such as colors, fonts, or styles.

Design Themes

Best for:  Changing the application-wide HTML generated for each database-connected control, such as tables, records, fields and filters.

Not good for:  Laying out individual pages, except at the “page theme” level.

Style sheets

Best for:  Changing application-wide stylistic elements, such as colors and fonts.

Not good for:  Creating database-connected components, such as tables, records, fields and filters.

ASPX pages
ASCX controls

Cosmetic and behavioral changes are made in a web page editor, such as Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, one page at a time.  Iron Speed Designer generates ASPX pages and ASCX controls.  Both of these can be changed to give you the desired customized look and feel.

Note, however, that these pages and controls are completely generated each time the application is built.  So, you will want to save your changes in a separate folder so you can reapply them to your application.

You can edit the HTML page and add any ASPX, JavaScript, Visual Basic, C# or other code within the HTML page.  The HTML page is used as the basis for generating the ASPX page and all code is passed through unchanged except the GEN: code generation tags.

Best for:  Any layout and style modification where it is acceptable that the page be overwritten each time the application is built.

Not good for:  If changes are made to the actual ASPX or ASCX pages, any modification where regenerating the application and overwriting the modifications made to the page would cause difficulties.

Follow the links below to understand the basics of adding new web pages to your application, editing them, hooking them to other web pages, and modifying them at the HTML level.

See

Customizing Web Page Layout and Style

Using and Modifying Style Sheets

Using Frames in Layout Pages

Placing ASP.NET Directives in Layout Pages

Adding Site-Wide HTML Tags

Automatically Refresh Page on Periodic Basis

Capturing the Enter Key in Layout Pages