Hi,

I've just got a few questions about application design I'd like to clear here....

1. Am I right in thinking that using the 3 tier application u could have one structure page, and just loads of little user controls and code behind files processing the application?

2. I want certain parts of my websites to be accessible to certain levels of registered users... here's a few scenario:
I want normal non paying resgistered users to have access to a certain user controls not just whole pages... for example, a registered users will be able to see the all the navigation links as active where as non registered users will see dimmer or greyed out text and the link won't be a proper clickable hyperlink.

3. How much control does ASP.NET have over styles? Would it be a better idea to store styles in a database if users can change certain colours? and certain colours change depending on whether users are registered or not?

So i'm right in thinking that the three tier application - presentation code data has the 'style' in the data part.

i'm thinking of a four tier application here: structure, code, data, style??

I think thats it for now.

Thanks
Deian

1. Usually, the tiers referred to by "n-tier" achitecture are things like: presentation (UI); business logic; data access; communications. The n-tier architecture concept is something larger than the idea of code separation in .net although using code-behind does play towards it with the general idea of presentation and logic being physically separated. Using user controls is more of a .net technology concept that promotes code/component re-use.

2. Handling security on this level of granularity is not something that .net is capable of out of the box to the best of my knowledge. You can use the built-in security features to restrict files or directories, but you'll have to manually to checks and set states for things like "user level x can not click on this link in this control". I've handled plenty of these scenarios and doing it in .net isn't much different conceptually from any other intelligent web application. You'll have to store some data somewhere specifying user access level and change properties on your site's controls accordingly.

3. .net has lots of control over styles. All controls have style properties. When it comes to building a web application that needs dynamically changing styles, there are several ways to approach a solution. You could build everything with CSS class names and build multiple stylesheets or a dynamic stylesheet for changes. Or you can use the built-in style attributes of the controls and change those as you go. I am a fan of CSS because it optimizes the HTML output of the controls. Instead of having a single control output all its styles every time it's drawn, it only has to write out a single CSS class attribute. This reduces the HTML weight of the page. Of course, if you need to be able to allow users to change lots of settings you might not be able to use this approach.

Peter
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