Making abstraction of previously acquired knowledge/methodologies isn't easy at all !
Peter Van Ooijen says that custom controls are no rocket science. I effectively could create my first custom control pretty easily today, and I'm pretty glad of this. Maybe I'll release a components pack, which would contain the different key components of MyBlogroll UI (Toolbar, TabControl, Action Panel), which would use a real skin feature. But here is not the point..
As I said in my previous post, MyBlogroll is my very first .NET application and I had the idea of developing it, to firstly learn C# and ASP.NET. Therefore, I guess I should stick to ASP.NET technology and it's development methodologies... But when you've been working for +4 years on an web-based IDE for intranet/internet applications development, which was entirely based on XML/XSL transformations (every damn screen was generated with XSLT), you'll understand that I feel really comfortable with XSLT...
When I started MyBlogroll development, I naturally reused my XSLT components library (which lets me create a toolbar, actionpanel, tabcontrol, in just 30 sec)... But I immediately realized I was going the wrong way if I wanted to really learn ASP.NET ! I should use ASP.NET the way it should be used... I mean: Using Server Forms, Server Controls, taking advantage of the Viewstate, etc... Indeed, when using XSL, you can't access programmatically to what's generated... Peter also made me understand why Don Box's blog subtitle is "Undoing four years of XSLT-inflicted damage inside the big house". I don't know if it's for the same reason as mine but I have a potential answer to this subtitle...
Ok, so let's try to forget XSL for a while and develop MyBlogroll_ with *real* ASP.NET ! But that's only one point of my previous post. I'd like to get your opinion on the other things I mentionned please :) Thanks :)