Complex page layout and design

Question

I have a page that has a around 30 links divided among 6 groups.

Boat
 a
 b
 c
Horses
 d
 e

... etc

When the user clicks the link the page will display a series of controls (dropdown, htmltable, chart) in a layout specific only to the link that was clicked.

I have a few ideas:

1. Create separate aspx pages for each link that share the same master page (about 30 aspx pages). Advantage: design/layout is easy. Disadvantage: 30 aspx pages
2. Determine if any links use the the same layout and create a common page with place holder controls
3. Dynamically load controls/css etc onto the page.

So a few questions:

1. Are any of these good approaches?
2. What are some alternative approaches?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use Microsoft's Ajax Control Toolkit and organize the link into tabs. So you have a tab for Horses, and it shows all the links for horses when active etc... You can even set up the tabs programattically if you want. All your tab layouts can be custom based on which category the user picked.

That is probably the best way, as it's very easy to setup and all works just like regular webforms controls. The only possible issue is it might make your site javascript dependent. I do not know how well or if the controls in the ajax control toolkit degrade when a user without javascript enabled views the page.

Answer 2

Certainly think twice before creating one monster page. It can become a real maintenance nightmare.

Just because you have 30 aspx pages does not mean you have to repeat yourself. Structure common functionality into reusable controls. Maintenance isn't so bad.