It struck me that the Page_Load code on page 259 to hide/show the treeview/menu depending on which theme you were using was not an ideal way to apply themes as you would have to make a code change with each new theme.

If you create a skin for the treeview and one for the menu in each of the themes, you can set the "visible" to true/false there instead to get the same result while keeping theme code in the themes themselves. In Monochrome, for example:

Code:

<asp:Menu runat="server" SkinID="navMenu" Visible="true"></asp:Menu>
<asp:TreeView runat="server" SkinID="navTree" Visible="false"></asp:TreeView>

(you would want to add the SkinID to the respective controls as well for this to work)

Would this not be the preferred way to do this?

Hi there,

You are absolutely right. This is a very clean way to do it, without the need to maintain code when you change or add themes.

In the book I wanted to show how to programmatically change page layout / behavior based on the theme. That's why I chose this route. However, if all you need to do is hide or show the relevant [FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']navigation [/FONT]controls, your solution is preferred.

The only "downside" I see with this is that themes now need to know about each other. In other words, Monochrome needs to know it needs to hide a navTree TreeView. Not a real big problem though, as themes often end up being tied to a specific application anyway.

Cheers,

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
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Author of Beginning ASP.NET 4.5 : in C# and VB, Beginning ASP.NET Web Pages with WebMatrix
and Beginning ASP.NET 4 : in C# and VB.
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