[MonoDevelop] Monodevelop and Asp.net Views

[Lluis Sanchez]

Maybe you don't understand the difference between web technologies and
desktop technologies. ASP.NET is a good technology for building
interfaces that will be accessed through the network, which means that:
     1. It is designed to handle many GUI users at the same time
     2. It can generate HTML that will work in all browsers (hopefully)
     3. It can transparently handle page and controls state between page
        reloads.
     4. It has a nice event model, in which events generated by the user
        in the client browser (such as clicking a button) can be handled
        in the server page (by using the postback feature).
     5. It has a good component model, so you can easily manipulate web
        controls and other html objects, and asp.net will render the
        correct html for you.
     6. Every interaction in the GUI that changes application data
        requires a postback to the server, rendering again the full page
        and sending it back to the client. It's slow, but that's how the
        web works.

When you are writing a desktop application GUI, this is what happens
with the nice ASP.NET features:
     1. You only have one user, so this feature is useless.
     2. There is only one browser, the one you embed in the application.
     3. Since the page state hold in the same app that embeds the
        browser, there is no need to do that trick of saving the page
        state as post data.
     4. You directly use browser events (such as when a link is clicked)
        or javascript events. No need for postback tricks.
     5. You can directly manipulate HTML elements in the page. You don't
        need to regenerate HTML for this.
     6. Since data is in the same app that hosts the browser, and you
        can dynamically change the HTML, there is no need for postbacks,
        so the interface is MUCH MORE responsive.

I'm glad you like ASP.NET, it is a good technology for the web, but if
you plan to write desktop applications, you should learn some GTK#, HTML
DOM, javascript and CSS.

(FYI, the start page of VS does not use ASP.NET at all)

Lluis.

On dj, 2004-12-16 at 11:07 +0000, Alexandre Gomes wrote:
> Well, if you ever use ASP.NET you'll know that using C# to generate 
> static html is almost the same that use GDI+ to draw a gtk button. Or 
> even right a complex xml file without using System.XML.
> 
> If anyone wish to generate something particulary complex, with lots of 
> layout ajustments, perhaps using the same theme as MonoDevelop (if MD 
> will have it), using static html can be very painful. Yet, asp.net web 
> controls were developed with this in mind. Also, there could be remote 
> addins, webservices, etc...
> 
> I understant that you do not wish a xsp dependency, but I really think 
> we lose power with this option. Maybe we do not need a dependency at 
> all, we could pick a future, stable, nice release and make it build-in 
> MonoDevelop. Since I think we would always need a changed version to run 
> inside MD instance to make aspx to have access to their properties, this 
> could be the option.
> 
> Todd Berman wrote:
> 
> >On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 19:10 +0000, Alexandre Gomes wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>I wish to Execute an aspx.
> >>I do not wish to show static html
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Why?
> >
> >MonoDevelop can not at this stage accept a hard dependency on xsp.
> >
> >--Todd
> >_______________________________________________
> >Monodevelop-list mailing list
> >Monodevelop-list@lists.ximian.com
> >http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/monodevelop-list
> >
> >.
> >
> >  
> >
>