In creating the Movie CMS, one of the design decisions I had to make was whether to use Master Pages, or Web Controls. Master Pages is a technique for visual inheritance. Design it once, inherit from the page, and the pages that inherits from it gain the features that was designed.

Master Pages is currently not easy to use, IMHO, as design time support is not available in Visual Studio .NET 2003 (though design time support is available in Visual Studio .NET Whidbey), the tool I'm using right now to design the Movie CMS. Eventually, I may move this project off to C#Builder.

The design decision that led to a choice of master pages or web controls is due to the fact that every page needs to have a standard header, such as it is now. The image and navigational menu needs to be available on every page, so that users can navigate between pages.

-- more design decisions here watch this space --

Eventually, I decided to move the images and navigational menu into a web control, as it was faster for me to make it a web control, than figure out how to restructure my application to use Master Pages.

Resources for Master Pages

  1. Extending Master Pages
  2. Page Templates
    1. Introduction
    2. Designer Issues
    3. Server Forms
  3. Master Pages
    1. Introduction
    2. Improved Version
  4. Standardize Your Site Fast With Master Pages
  5. Master Page Templates in ASP.NET
    1. Part 1
    2. Part 2
  6. Page Template Paradox - separating design and content