Craig's Blog

ASP.NET Starter Kits

I just wanted to pass along a cool freebie for those out there who are wanting/trying to learn ASP.NET and want to pick up some cool techniques. Microsoft has created a whole set of starter kits located at http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/downloads/kits/default.aspx also there's a quick review of them on MSDN -- http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/03/08/StarterKits/default.aspx

I espcially like the Community kit which is portal web site. This one is fully functional too if you want a free portal. I've been researching how it uses the IHttpModule class to intercept http requests before it gets to the asp.net handler. One of the things that rocks is you can hook into the authentication event handler and perform you're own authentication/authorization. Very cool. The kit dynamically builds each page from a web control and overlays skins. That's kind of neat but I'm not much for skins but I do like the “master page” approach. I plan to hybrid some of it into my own web site. I know that ASP.NET 2.0 will have incorporate master pages as part of the framework. I've been waiting awhile for it to get out of beta. I think I'll just plow ahead with this approach though.

Another kit that I plan on looking at is the Reports kit. They do a lot of fancy stuff with GDI+ and displaying data via data grids, lists and repeaters. Typical parent-child relationships and such. Something I've been investigating in my new media wishlist component I'm trying to add to my website.