Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB

Chapter 6. Creating Consistent Looking Web Sites

When you're designing and building a web site you should always strive to make the layout and behavior as consistent as possible. Consistency gives your site a professional appearance and it helps your visitors to find their way around the site. Fortunately, ASP.NET 3.5 offers a number of great features to implement a consistent design. In addition, Visual Web Developer has a set of great tools and a rich Design View helping you create great-looking pages in no time.

In previous chapters you learned how to work with VWD, HTML, CSS, and server controls to create your web pages visually. Chapter 5 introduced you to programming in .NET. This chapter is the first that combines these concepts. You'll see how to write code that applies to all the pages in your site, creating a central location for shared behavior.

In particular, this chapter deals with the following topics that help you create well-designed and consistent web pages that are easy to maintain:

• Using master and content pages that allow you to define the global look of a web page

• Working with a centralized base page that allows you to define common behavior for all pages in your site

• Creating ASP.NET 3.5 themes to define the look and feel of your site with an option for the user to choose their favorite theme at runtime

• Creating skins to quickly make site-wide changes to control layout

The next section shows you how to create a master page that defines the general look and feel ...