Microsoft ASP.NET Web Site

When I joined the administration team for the www.asp.net web site, its design was old and unsuccessful. A complete redesign was due in a year’s time, but something needed to be done in the interim to improve the discoverability of content. To this end I recommended a series of incremental improvements, which you may review in the Discoverability.zip file. The recommendations were accepted and I implemented the design improvements one by one, until the complete redesign was underway in early 2007.

In early 2007 we worked with an independent web designer to create a new design for the ASP.NET web site. The designer created a new look and feel and provided a handful of HTML and CSS templates, which I then implemented across hundreds of pages on the site.

As the new design was implemented, some aspects of the design worked while others did not. The designer and I worked together to fine-tune the design so that each page worked on its own, and all pages worked together as an ensemble.

So that any HTML updates flowed through the entire site, the HTML was abstracted from the content pages and user controls. This was done by adding a simple skinning system to the Titan application. While simple, the skinning system is very flexible and works cleanly with the full array of ASP.NET server controls and Titan presentation controls.