Dreamweaver and ASP.NET Master Pages

Report · Jul 14, 2008

Hello from a first time poster,

I'm looking to use Dreamweaver to edit .aspx files that use ASP.NET 2.0 master pages. So far, I feel like I'm halfway to getting them to work. But now Dreamweaver itself is getting in the way.

On a hunch, I set up a Testing Server for my site. I selected "ASP.NET C#" as the server model, set the access to "Local/Network" and set the Temporary server folder to the root folder of my organization's internal test site. This works (mostly) with our current .aspx pages, which are ASP.NET C#, but use .NET 1.1.

Our IT department is moving towards .NET 2.0, so we're currently testing Dreamweaver's compatibility. Using the same Testing Server setup (on a 2.0 server), I used the "Live Data View" button to compile an .aspx page that uses a master page. The error the server returned is why I'm posting here.

quote:

Parser Error Message: Only Content controls are allowed directly in a content page that contains Content controls.

Source Error:
Line 17: </div>
Line 18: </asp:Content>
Line 19: 

It appears that Dreamweaver is injecting a comment into the .aspx page to denote that it successfully interacted with the server. However, .NET 2.0 Master pages do not allow any top-level code that is not directly related to the master page template. Thus Dreamweaver's claims of "success" actually cause failure.

Has anyone else encountered this before? Is there any way to prevent DW from inserting that comment?

Thank you for any help you can provide,

- Jon Waller
- Web Specialist
- Ontario College of Teachers

Report · Jul 14, 2008

Don't use Live Data. Just type the URL of the page directly into the
browser.

--
Jules
http://www.charon.co.uk/products.aspx
Charon Cart
Ecommerce for ASP/ASP.NET

Report · Jul 14, 2008

> Our IT department is moving towards .NET 2.0, so we're currently testing
> Dreamweaver's compatibility.

DW does not do .net 2.0. So I'd treat it solely as an HTML editor or a text
editor to edit raw code.

Ideally, you'd just have everyone switch to VS.net, though.

(or, even better, have everyone stop using .net, but that probably won't
happen ;o)

> I used the "Live Data View" button to compile an .aspx page that uses
> a master page.

DW can't compile 2.0 code behind. that said, you don't have to compile aspx
pages...only the CS or VB files.

-Darrel

Report · Jul 14, 2008

Yeah, they use Visual Studio.NET in IT to do the programming of the site template, and then we've always used Dreamweaver to edit the static content in each page.

When you open up a 2.0 .aspx page in DW CS3, it shows the content that's inside the <asp:Content> tags, so they are editable. (In DW 8, the same <asp:Content> get completely ignored, so CS3 did bring with it some new .NET 2.0 compatibility.)

When I said 'compile', I know that Dreamweaver doesn't do it itself, but it requests the server to put the page together and send it back, so that in Design view you can see the programmed portions of the page. It works like this with our current .NET 1.1 template. It seems like it would work the same way with the 2.0 pages--as it is, Dreamweaver is successfully telling the server to process the page, but then DW is interrupting that process. I'm wondering what would happen if that interruption (the "MMDW:success" comment) could be removed. We did a Google search, but came up with nothing relevant.

We're using the Design View (and the "Live Data" feature) because we deal with pages that have a lot of bilingual text, which is harder to edit and format in Code view. (Plus my co-worker/supervisor is a WYSIWYG person.) We wouldn't be using DW to program in .NET. Our programmers seem to think Master pages are the new hip thing (they're already using them in their own portions of our web site), so we're trying to figure out how that is going to affect us Dreamweaver users.

Thanks,

- Jon

Report · Jul 14, 2008

> We're using the Design View (and the "Live Data" feature) because we deal
> with
> pages that have a lot of bilingual text, which is harder to edit and
> format in
> Code view. (Plus my co-worker/supervisor is a WYSIWYG person.)

Maybe give MS Expression Web a try as a WYSIWYG editor replacement for DW:

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/overview.aspx?key=web

> Our programmers seem to think Master pages are the
> new hip thing

Eh. MS said to use them, so we use them. I don't like them. But, whadya
going to do? ;o)

> so we're trying to figure out how that is going to affect us Dreamweaver
> users.

Well, ultimately, the issue is trying to get Adobe and MS products to play
nice. That probably just isn't going to happen anytime soon without some
pain.

-Darrel

Report · Jul 22, 2008

I just thought I'd update the thread I started by noting that I downloaded the DW CS4 beta, and it doesn't have the problem I described. Live View (and the new Live Code) work with ASP.NET 2.0.