Earlier today I posted about large view state issues. Another issue that faces me with this current project I'm working on (which goes hand-in-hand with the large view state problems), are large Web Forms. By this I mean the client wants a single Web page with a gaggle of form fields. By “large” I'm talking about, in some cases, over 300 Web controls on a single page. (For the record, this is the client's specs, not my design!)
Has anyone worked on projects before where Web Forms of this size were common? There's a number of issues I'm having that are a bit annoying, and was wondering if there are any tips/hints in helping circumvent these problems. Some of the annoyances of large Web Forms include:
- Visual Studio .NET drags. Switching from HTML view to Design view means it's time to go downstairs and get a soda.
- When visiting the page for the first time after any changes have been made to the HTML portion, it takes a good four or five seconds for the ASP.NET engine to autogenerate the class that derives from the code-behind class. This won't be an issue in deployment, but is annoying when you need to make a small change to the HTML in a page.
- View state can get very large, as I alluded to earlier. This is especially the case when using DropDownLists.
- The code for populating these Web controls with database data and, conversely, reading the data from the controls when saving, can be cumbersome. Usually if I have a series of related controls I'll give them some sort of similar ID value, and then use a loop and FindControl together to snap through a dozen or so related Web controls in three lines of code as compared to 12.
Any tips or helpful suggestions appreciated. Thanks!