Last week I wrote a precompiled assembly that included all the CSSFriendly resources in a single assembly.

I just updated the recompiled assembly to use the adapter's 1.0 release. Information can be found on my blog site.

Instructions for installing and using the compiled adapters can be found in the article, "Using the precompiled CSSFriendly ASP.Net Control Adapters Assembly."

Download the compiled CSSFriendly Control Adapters 1.0 (58k, with source code)
Download the compiled CSSFriendly Control Adapters 1.0 (27k, DLL only)

Note to the adapters team: the changes to the code files in this release will work in compiled and non-compiled distributions. The code to link to script and CSS files first searches for the file in the assembly; if it is not found, the old method works. As a result, the same code can be used in embedded and non-embedded environments. Hopefully it's helpful to you!

 

Hey, this is really cool.  Precompiling the adapter kit was one of those things that I really, really, really wanted to do for RTM but simply couldn't because we needed to keep the must-do list reasonably small in order to actually get the release out the door, so to speak.  Still, I wanted to acknowledge that this is a terrific idea and to thank you personally for your efforts and for making your contributions available to the community.  This is exactly the sort of "involvement" that deserves special recognition.  NICELY DONE!

Now that I've got your ear, how about changing this...

<div class="PrettyLogin" id="ctl00_ctl00_MainContent_LiveExample_loginview1_login1">
	<div class="AspNet-Login">
		<div class="AspNet-Login-TitlePanel">
			<span>Login</span>
		</div>
		...
	</div>
</div>

... to this ...

<div class="PrettyLogin" id="ctl00_ctl00_MainContent_LiveExample_loginview1_login1">
	<fieldset class="AspNet-Login">
		<legend class="AspNet-Login-TitlePanel">
			<span>Login</span>
		</legend>
		...
	</fieldset>
</div>

... in the next version?  

This is great!  This makes it much easier to use/deploy.  Thanks!

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would you want to compile the CSS into the assembly? Doesn't that preclude making presentation changes without requiring a recompile?

Yes, this can get a bit confusing.  Let me try to explain.  The approach we took with these CSS Friendly adapters was to divide our CSS rules into to groupings.  One group of rules is concerned with superficial things like color.  The other concerns things like showing and hiding things when they are hovered over; these are more behavioral rules.  The DLL that is discussed in this thread has encapsulated the latter rules, not the former.  You still have to add those to your App_Theme\foobar folder or link them into your pages manually with <link> or @import.

You can read more about this in the section of this kit's whitepaper devoted to the architecture and conventions applied to these sample adapters:

http://www.asp.net/cssadapters/whitepaper.aspx#SamplesConventions

Please feel free to write back if you have more questions.

Regards,

BTW, the fieldset/legend idea is a nice idea.  I'll keep it in mind.

Russ,

 

Thanks for the clarification. I remember that design bit from reading the docs, but I guess I read his wording in the post  a little too inclusively. 

 All that being said, it's a great addition to the toolkit. I've really found these adapters quite useful, and this makes them even easier.
 

roberthking:

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would you want to compile the CSS into the assembly? Doesn't that preclude making presentation changes without requiring a recompile?

The CSS compiled in the assembly are the base rules that provide functional presentation details and can easily be overridden by your own CSS markup. There are only three possible CSS files -- for the DetailsView, Menu, and TreeView -- and each are very limited in what they actually do (take a look at the source code in the distribution to see exactly what is done).

The compiled assembly makes it easier to utilize the CSSFriendly adapter kit as a framework without having to include the source code and related files. The CSS files themselves could be removed from the distribution if you don't want them, too.