Stepping back into the daylight...
It's been over a week since I last blogged, I've been heads-down in a piece of code. Using the Intersoft WebGrid.NET, I needed the ability to make context-sensitive menus available based on the column that has been right-clicked and pass along configured values. The implementation supports default menu grouping that's integrated with the security system, but the solution also allows for overrides for custom right-clicks on a per-page basis. I'm pretty happy with the implementation, I did the same thing with the built-in datagrid for asp.net but this implementation is cleaner and I like the code a lot more. The solution is entirely client-side and performs very well. Writing this much javascript reminds me just how much I dislike that “programming language“, but that's a topic for another day. I could have built the client-side javascript using XSL, but those solutions tend to be unreadable/undebuggable and this situation would have been even worse.
I've blogged before about Intersoft's WebGrid.NET before, and I continue to be very happy with their product. The server- and client-side interfaces are well thought out and extremely functional. As is typical with a 3rd party tool, there is a learning curve to get the feel for the product's architecture and Intersoft's product is no different. I've built scaffolding around the product to handle the 95%+ usage scenarios we see in the company's application to (1) minimize coding and (2) virtually eliminate grid-specific code on each page.
Next I'm saving the grid's layout to the database per user - allowing the user to resize, reorder, hide and show columns and then save the configuration across sessions. But first, I'm taking the weekend off to enjoy Christmas with the family.
Have a Merry Christmas!