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Jan
28
2012
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Posted 111 days ago ago by Douglas C.
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Previous to advanced content management systems, the majority of commercial web site design agencies relied on handling static HTML websites for a sizable chunk of their revenues. On the other hand, with the breakthrough of content management systems such as DotNetNuke, the end user has promptly become knowledgeable of the advantages offered by dynamic sites. In order to cope with this new requirement, web designers need to become familiar with the possibilities presented by these new technological breakthroughs. The skinning architecture in DotNetNuke allows professional web designers to create beautiful user interfaces which assimilate seamlessly with the underlying portal application to generate a robust, yet aesthetically desirable customer web site.
One of the nice things about classic ASP - and one of the major reasons for its reputation as a rapid web development (RAD) tool - is the fact that ASP scripts can be put into regular HTML markup to turn otherwise static HTML content into intelligent web pages. This feature makes it feasible to rapidly write ASP applications that make web pages dynamically from a database (or other external data source), and to develop highly effective web applications.
However, this ease of us comes with a price. Many ASP web sites have a mangled spaghetti of intermingled HTML markup and ASP script, making them tough to decipher and even more difficult to maintain. This difficulty often rears its ugly head when web designers need to update the user interface. Since the presentation attributes are embedded in the ASP script, modifications often require a joint effort between a web developer and a designer to ensure the integrity of the modification. This eventually results in much more work, more time, and higher cost.
Skinning entails the use of "templates" which distinguish presentation and layout attributes from application logic. An intelligent skinning engine is then used to build the artifacts into a final product. This two-tiered approach affords both developers and designers a reasonable degree of freedom when it comes to maintaining a web site, and can greatly lessen the time and effort required in the post-release phases of a development project.
However, skinning also introduces some complexities to your web application. The process of merging multiple files into a single page can result in considerable performance degradation. Not to mention, developers must be well educated to keep the presentation details of layout and appearance abstracted from their script code. Both of these items can be mitigated through the use of technology and a robust skinning architecture.
As a result the skinning solution needs a technique for a web designer to define a skin using the most basic base technology. HTML is the lowest common denominator when it comes to the Web and has the greatest support in terms of design applications. The only problem with HTML is that it is absolutely static - yet a web application has requirements for dynamic components as well.
Based on the demands and issues specified above, it would seem to be useful to enable web designers to include placeholders into their HTML markup which represent dynamic functionality. This provides the cleanest abstraction of “form” and “function”. The skin file could be modified without impacting the application logic. The application logic could be modified without affecting the user interface. The only issue is the performance penalty imposed by this extra layer of separation.