fixed layout in formview template

Question

I have n pages with formviews, all sharing a similar layout inside their item/edit/insert templates.

For example all item and edit templates have a header and body part inside where i put the fields. The header has a certain style and the body part too.

My question is how can i enforce this style in all my formviews without repeating the same bulk css styles all the time.

Now i'm using masterpages for this with multiple formviews on 1 page. That's not good i think. I want one 1 page for edit/insert/item and 1 formview.

I would prefer somehow to define the style for edit template once and load it into every formview. Ofcourse not all the formviews have the same fields, so like masterpages i would like to have 'areas' where i can put my fields.

The perfect way i suppose would be to have a formview span a complete masterpage based page including the contentplaceholders inside it's edit/insert/item templates.

Any ideas are more than welcome.

Edit: I read it's possible in .Net 4 using dynamic data. I'm stuck with 3.5 for the moment.

Answer 1

You can use Themes(or Style Sheet Themes) and skins for this. For Example Create a theme Theme1 and a skin file under it with the following content.

<asp:FormView  runat="server" 
      RowStyle-BackColor="Blue" />

Now you can make pages in your application use the theme by entering the following in web.config.

 <pages theme="Theme1">

Also you can use RowStyle-CSSClass or EditRowStyle(to apply to edit template). You can also enter the style sheet file in the same Theme folder

Answer 2

You could set a CSSClass for the form view or some other standard container than use child selectors in your CSS.