Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Overview of this book

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 is a dynamic web publishing system with which you can build websites quickly and cost-efficiently. MCMS provides the administration, authoring, and data management functionality, and you provide the website interface, logic, and workflow. Once your website is up and running, your content contributors can add and edit content on their own, without the need to work with developers or the IT department. First time developers of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 face a relatively steep learning curve. Not only are they expected to be conversant in the Microsoft .NET Framework, they are also required to be familiar with the concepts of MCMS 2002. Many beginners to MCMS start out by looking at the example site that ships with the product; tweaking it, dissecting it and turning it inside out using the obscure code comments as markers. However, when it comes to starting their own website from scratch, many are baffled ? where do they begin? This book exists to answer that question; teaching the essential concepts of MCMS 2002 in a clear, straightforward and practical manner. Containing answers to some of the most asked questions in developer newsgroups, this book is a treasure trove of tricks and tips for solving the problems faced by MCMS developers. This is a unique resource focused exclusively on the needs of developers using MCMS. It doesn?t waste time and pages on user or administrator level information that is well covered in other documentation. It?s a distillation of practical experience that developers need to get results, fast. The authors carefully structured example project complements and extends the knowledge gained from an initial look at the examples that ship with MCMS.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server
Credits
About the Authors
Introduction

Chapter 14. Customizing Placeholder Controls

The ability to create custom placeholder controls is by far one of the most exciting advancements in MCMS 2002. Previous versions of MCMS shipped with the standard placeholder controls that you saw in Chapter 7 but there was very little that could be done to change the way they behaved.

To recap, the default MCMS placeholder controls provide basic authoring features. To add files, authors use the SingleAttachmentPlaceholderControl. The SingleImagePlaceholderControl is used for images, and for everything else there is the HtmlPlaceholderControl, which can also include attachments and images. On the face of it, you may not find any compelling reasons to take the extra time to build custom placeholder controls.

What if, instead of giving authors free play over the number of characters entered in the placeholder, you need to impose a restriction on the number of characters entered? Or perhaps you would like to give authors the convenience of using...