User control: User and Custom Controls
 

User control can simply be defined as the manual procedures that control how the user interacts with a site and database. In the development of ecommerce web sites, user controls and custom controls are very essential. User controls are custom controls that are reusable. User controls use similar techniques as the ones used on web server and HTML controls. User controls are essential because they provide an easy way to reuse and partition user interfaces across all web applications that are developed using ASP.NET. This is mainly because they make use of the Web Forms Programming Model that is used to run Web Form Pages.

Custom controls are code components that are compiled and executed on the server side. They generally expose object models. They also render the markup text, like XML or HTML, just as user controls or normal Web Forms do.

The following are some of the differences between user and custom controls:

Deployment

User controls are designed for only a single application while custom controls are designed with ability to be used by multiple applications. The user controls are deployed in a source form (which is .ascx) together with the controls source code for each application while custom controls are deployed in the global assembly cache or directory bin of an application. If a user controls are deployed in more than one application, it brings about redundancy, and problems in maintenance. Alternatively, when custom controls are deployed in more than one application there are no maintenance or redundancy problems.

Creation

The design and creation of user controls is same as that of Web Form Pages (this creation is good for RAD – Rapid Application Development) while creation of custom controls involves writing many lines of code because there is no support for the designer.

Content

The user control is well suited for displaying fixed or static content using a fixed layout (e.g. when making footers and headers) while custom controls are more suited for the purposes of displaying dynamic content on an application.

Design

There isn’t much code required because user controls are always authored during the design time phase and also because the controls only contain static content while writing the code for a custom control requires more code to define the life cycle of the control.

Due to the complexity of determining which of these controls to use to get the best user experience on your ecommerce web store, it is crucial that you get the best developer that knows what the best solution for your web store’s site is. At NextGen eBiz, we have a team of expert and experienced developers that have knowledge on user control development.

We will create the best user control solutions that will also consider the easiness and predictability of the user’s interaction with the web store’s site. This will ensure that your ecommerce web site runs well without any unnecessary errors caused by the user’s interaction with the site. If you would like any information on the solutions that we can offer you that are geared towards user control development, then contact us.