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asp.net-mvcrad

MVC, RAD, and view design tools

Our company has a requirement to build a web based business line solution with 50+ forms. A lot of this would be CRUD on a central database. So far we have not tackled the web space before so this is all relatively new to us.

Currently we are planning on using ASP.net MVC for:

  • testability (Unit test etc)
  • separation of concerns
  • better long term maintenance (Which can be become a problem with WebForms from what I can gather from other posts.)

However, we have hit a hurdle. After much research on various forums and tutorial videos we have come to the realization that ASP.net MVC does not support a drag and drop design environment.

We have investigated using code templates etc in ASP.net MVC and these definitely speed up constructing the view in code. In fact most forums suggest using code templates etc.

However our company generally has a very fast turnover rate with application builds and modifications. Sometimes we need to push out updates for the next day or week.

We feel that not having a design tool for views may hamper us somewhat.

We have so far considered/investigated the following:

  • Build in Visual Studio in code. Refresh web site running beside IDE on second screen. Tweak rinse and repeat.

  • Use Microsoft Expression products. (Expression Web etc). Build view etc then reload in Visual Studio to work on code behind. However I think I tested WebForms in this not ASP.net MVC.

  • Use a web design tool such as Dreamweaver (or other) then copy html for view/page into visual studio and hook up code behind etc.

  • Use LightSwitch instead (We did not want requirement of silverlight and this seemed a liitle to simplistic for our requirements so this was out of the question)

We thought maybe others have had similar experiences and could share their thoughts.

So my question is, if any of you have had a similar situation, what tools did you use to design ASP.net MVC views while maintaining the ability to quickly and easily build new UIs or make tweaks?

Solution

  • If you need to have nice drag and drop experience and have no webdev experience I would stay with rad-controlls and old school ASP.NET.

    ASP.NET MVC shines if you work closer to HTML, Javascript and HTTP. You can get quite far with old school ASP.NET and rad-controlls without knowing a lot about the web.