Asp.net layout managers or layout controls
I've been a long time winforms developer and one of the things I really liked was the layout controls they had, like flowlayoutpanel or gridlayout. unfortunately they don't seem to exist in asp.net or are they?
I'm in the process of modifying my existing asp.net website to use css instead of tables, but when I go into visual studio mode it looks terrible.
I find it very difficult to wrap my head around all these floats, divs: clean up and css tricks and then test and test in every browser. There must of course be a better way. Ideally, a layout manager that will render properly in design mode will act like a container, be lightweight, and use smart enough to highlight tables or css depending on the capabilities of the browser.
does such a control exist as part of asp.net, open source or commercial add-ons?
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Using tables instead of DIVs and css can certainly help with shim (many think this is bad practice, but it works)
Also take a look at the asp.net relay and ListView components. The ListView is very nice in that you have a lot of control over the layout and the rendered html, I would look at that.
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First, don't rely on VS Designer. This is not a browser. Since each browser implements css differently, your only option is to validate against the browsers you think your target market will use.
The css positioning may seem a little confusing at first, but if you stick with it, you can wrap it around. There is no control as you describe that I am aware of. CSS is part of the learning curve for web developers, just like SQL if you need to use a database, etc.
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