ASP.NET Dynamic Menu (WebResource.axd)

Author Message
Sergey 05/06/2008 01:18 am
Hi there,

I am trying to download our internal MOSS (Sharepoint) site. Everything works fine except the dynamic menu.
The portal is quite big, so I have created a very simple asp.net application. It has one master page, one page in the root directory (based on the master page) and one page in subdirectory (also based on the master page).

The master page has a asp.net menu control that is being populated from a .sitemap file (xml-like file).
This menu is then being generated "on-fly" through the WebResource.axd handler, which is responsible to serve the client-side javascript code used to post back the page.

When I try to download this simple site the OE behaves very weird. On one run the menu works fine on a page in a root directory but not on the other, on another run it does not work at all, etc.
I have had dozens of runs and could not identify the pattern when it works and when it does not. I cleared cache, deleted project files... everything.

It seems like something is going wrong when working with WebResource.asxd file.

Would appreciate any suggestion.

Thanks.
Sergey.
Oleg Chernavin 05/06/2008 11:42 am
Yes, we know about problems with sharepoint sites. This is a tough kind of sites, but we plan to work on this. I am not 100% sure if we are able to improve, but it is in our plans.

Best regards,
Oleg Chernavin
MP Staff
Sergey 05/06/2008 03:22 pm
Thank you for your reply.

Just to let you know that the OE works fine with the sharepoint sites. At least with our one. Except just one problem - dynamic menu loaded by WebResource.axd handler. I initially thought that the problem was indeed with the sharepoint site. But I then created a simple asp.net site with just 2 pages (no sharepoint) and there was the same problem. Dynamic menu was not working properly. Something wrong with referencing WebResource.axd file after all files have been downloaded.

Have you come across this problem before?

Thanks.
Oleg Chernavin 05/06/2008 05:01 pm
Maybe it was another problem. Can you send me these sample pages to support@metaproducts.com or a link to them? I will take a look and see what can be done.

Oleg.
Sergey 05/06/2008 05:20 pm
Just sent it through. Thank you. Let me know if you need further details.

Thank you again.
Sergey.
Sergey 05/06/2008 10:01 pm
Hi again,

I think I figured out what the problem was.
We conciously changed "Identify as" setting to Web Downloader. We did that because our portal has several master pages and depending on the identity it displays/hides some specific sharepoint stuff (e.g. editorial panel, search panel, etc.) that is not needed in the offline copy.

It appeared that Web Downloader does not put javascript block containing "function __doPostBack(eventTarget, eventArgument)" on every page. Plus it makes some other minor changes including errors in referencing WebResource.axd file. That is why dynamic menu was not working (or so I think).

So, we changed "Identify as" setting back to IE and menu works fine.

Is that a known issue for Web Downloader?

Anyway, thank you for your help.

I though have anoher question (if required I can start a different thread).

I want to autoexport the site after download into a help (chm) file. According to OE help I added the following command:
Additional=AutoExport=c:\export\;1014 but it still exports the files into a directory.

Could you please correct this line to autoexport the site into HTML help file?

Thank you.
Oleg Chernavin 05/07/2008 06:12 am
The agent identification influences the site in some cases. They may even supply different contents for different browsers. So far the best is MS IE identification. It is the most compatible.

Regarding autoexport - yes, there is a bug. I just fixed it. You may download the updated oe.exe file here:

http://www.metaproducts.com/download/betas/OEP2759.ZIP

Oleg.