About the .NET Web Control Consumer (WCC)
The .NET Web Control Consumer provides support for using
standard .NET Web Controls in portlet development.
Two problems arise with using .NET Web Controls out of the box
for portlet development:
- Client-side scripting problems due to naming collisions: .NET
assumes it occupies the whole page, and all specific functions are
always named the same. These problems occur primarily with validator
controls. Validator controls define a page scope variable (Page_Validators), a page scope function (ValidatorOnSubmit()), and also write some inline JavaScript code.
- Postback problems cause naming collisions in addition to posting
back to the incorrect page: The preferred behavior for Web Control
is generally an in-place refresh. For example, when a user selects
the next month in the Calendar control, it posts back to the originating
aspx page. Even though the post goes through the gateway, it is not
sent to the portal page that hosted it, and the user loses the portal
experience.
The .NET Web Control Consumer package overcomes these problems
and provides a simplified experience for portlet developers. The core
of the package is a .NET HttpModule that modifies the outgoing HTML
before it reaches the portal server. The module solves the problems
described above by: a) individuating all .NET provided function names
to avoid collisions, and b) modifying all postback functions
to use JavaScript instead of posting directly to the server.
