So my most recent client needs a CMS system. There are a million out there, but the problem is my client is a complete Microsoft shop so I had to write the page in ASP.NET. That changes the game a lot. Unless you want to pay some serious cash, the choices for a CMS system are slim.

That isn’t to say there aren’t some free ones out there because there are. I uncovered two during my search (AxCMS and umbraco). I didn’t delve very far into either of these because it was shortly my client and I discussed the CMS system that we decided to make the page have a side scrolling page effect.

When you create a page that has a slick effect you basically throw out any packaged software because inevitably it won’t fit in with the effect. So that is how I came to build my own CMS system. Now I use that term lightly because compared to something like Wordpress, mine is rather weak.

However, it does what it was designed to do…save pages. It could easily be enhanced to allow things such as creating completely new pages, deleting pages, etc, but my client didn’t need that functionality so I didn’t build it for this version, but perhaps I will in the future.

So the point of this article is to go through the steps I took to make it work (here is the final result).
It turned out to be a lot more difficult than I originally anticipated. Part of that was just the learning curve, and part of it was wrestling ASP.NET Ajax to the ground. In the end though, I am pretty proud of my first version of my CMS.

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Over the past few days I have been going over how to build a side scrolling page effect using various frameworks.

The first day I went over the basics of the effect and how to implement it using ASP.NET Ajax.
Yesterday I went over how to create the effect using scriptaculous.

Today the goal is to tackle MooTools and see how it stacks up in comparison to the other frameworks. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I began a series on creating a Side Scrolling Page. If you missed it feel free to check out part one to get a feel for what we are building, and how it works with the ASP.NET Ajax framework.

Today the goal is to tackle the same effect using the script.aculo.us framework. If you have never heard of this one, it is basically a friendly implementation of the Prototype framework (confused yet?). It has a lot of neat effects and AJAX features and is pretty darn easy to use. Good stuff.

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When I was building my portfolio page a few weeks ago, I came up with an idea for a side-scrolling page. The idea is basically, you click on an arrow and the content slides to the left or right. Cool idea, but I couldn’t wrap my head around how to get the CSS to work.

Shortly after I figured out how to get it all to work I learned that my unique idea wasn’t all that unique after all. Its still a great effect, and over the last few days I have seen a lot of people asking how to do it on various forums so it makes for a good tutorial.

When I originally started this article I was planning on using just the ASP.NET Ajax framework because that is what I was using for my latest project. However, once I got it up and running I was a bit disappointed in the performance of the animation. That is when I began hunting for another way to do it. By the end of my search I had delved in and created a side scroller using 3 different frameworks: ASP.NET Ajax, scriptaculous, and MooTools. All of them “get the job done”, but I learned that each have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Over the next few days I will be going over these different frameworks and explaining what I liked and didn’t like about each one. Each will have their own demo so you can see how the finished app looks and feels, and in the end I will include a link on where you can download all the pages I made for the demos. Read the rest of this entry »