Building an ASP.NET 2.0 Master Page in Three Steps

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This tutorial is about a great new feature in ASP.NET 2.0 called the Master Page. If you wish to have a web site with a user-friendly, consistent look and feel throughout your web pages which is easy to maintain and rapid to develop then this is what you should look into.

Introduction

The motivation to create a common look and feel for all the web pages at a site which evolved over a period of time at Microsoft has culminated in this embodiment called a Master Page. This supersedes the previous Microsoft developed strategies such as serve side includes, user controls in VS2003, etc. During the heydays of ASP, include pages delivered similar functionality but were difficult to maintain for larger sites.

A Master Page establishes a common look and feel for all your web pages by providing a template with an editable place holder. The content for the place holder comes from your web page. The concept is really very simple as shown in the next picture. In the website, consider the two files you will be creating, one a Master.master page and another called the myPage.aspx. Master has only the Header and the Footer with an embedded contentplaceholder with HTML markup. The myPage.aspx has just one ASP content placeholder control devoid of any other HTML markup.

However when the user browses to the myPage.aspx, he will see only the myPage.aspx rendered on the browser as shown.

Next: Step 1: Adding a Master.master page to your site >>
 

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