Simplify CSS and Javascript Compression In Visual Studio

Brant Burnett — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:35:26 +0000

I’ve released a new open source tool that performs design-time compression of your CSS and Javascript files in Visual Studio projects. This can be a big help, since it allows you to easily do it in your project rather than as part of your build/publish process. And, since it leaves both the compressed and uncompressed versions in place, you can still use the uncompressed version for debugging.

Read more about this new tool or download it at http://btburnett.com/netcompressor.

Linking Stylesheets From Content Pages

Brant Burnett — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:12:00 +0000

Personally, I find stylesheets to be the best way to apply formating to web pages. Skins certainly have their uses, but they tend to pad out the HTML with lots of redundant information that can be avoided by referencing a stylesheet, thus reducing download times. Stylesheets can be easily added to themes, but sometimes you don’t want to reference all of your stylesheets on every page, which is what happens if you put stylesheets into a theme.

When using master and content pages, this can be a bit tricky. The common solution isn’t all that difficult, you just have to add a content section inside the header of your master page.

<% Master Language=”VB” AutoEventWireup=”false” CodeBehind=”SystemMaster.Master.vb” Inherits=”MyWebApp.SystemMaster” %>

Then on your content page:

<%@ Page Language=”vb” AutoEventWireup=”false” MasterPageFile=”~/SystemMaster.Master” CodeBehind=”Page.aspx.vb” Inherits=”MyWebApp.Page”
title=”Untitled Page” %>

Insert Body Here…

Now this works great for most scenarios, but what if you’re using URL rewriting in order to dynamically generate your pages based on the URL that was requested? In that case, the relative path to the stylesheet won’t work. If you know that your web application will always be the root application on the server, you can use a path that starts with /, but that isn’t always the case. What you really need to do is use an application relative path, starting with a ~/.

Normally you can change your link tag to include runat=”server” and it will process application relative paths in the href attribute. However, this doesn’t work on content pages for some reason. Therefore, I’ve created the class below to help.

Imports System
Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.Text
Imports System.Web
Imports System.Web.UI
Imports System.Web.UI.WebControls

_
Public Class SmartLink
Inherits WebControl

_
Property href() As String
Get
Dim s As String = CStr(ViewState(“href”))
If s Is Nothing Then
Return String.Empty
Else
Return s
End If
End Get

Set(ByVal Value As String)
ViewState(“href”) = Value
End Set
End Property

_
Property rel() As String
Get
Dim s As String = CStr(ViewState(“rel”))
If s Is Nothing Then
Return String.Empty
Else
Return s
End If
End Get

Set(ByVal Value As String)
ViewState(“rel”) = Value
End Set
End Property

_
Property type() As String
Get
Dim s As String = CStr(ViewState(“type”))
If s Is Nothing Then
Return String.Empty
Else
Return s
End If
End Get

Set(ByVal Value As String)
ViewState(“type”) = Value
End Set
End Property

Public Overrides Sub RenderBeginTag(ByVal writer As System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter)
If rel <> String.Empty Then
writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Rel, rel)
End If
If type <> String.Empty Then
writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Type, type)
End If
If href <> String.Empty Then
writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Href, ResolveClientUrl(href))
End If
writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Link)
End Sub

End Class

Now you replace the link tag on the content page with this:

That’s it, now you have an application relative stylesheet link on your content page that works with URL rewriting.

Brant Burnett's Development Blog » CSS

Simplify CSS and Javascript Compression In Visual Studio

Linking Stylesheets From Content Pages