Planning your structure with Web Matrix

In this part of the tutorial we will consider some of the basic functions of Web Matrix and construct the structure and pages for our new web application.

Open the Web Matrix by either double clicking the icon on your desktop, single clicking the icon in your quick launch bar or selecting the program from your list of programs from the Start Menu. The “Add New File” dialog box will probably open itself but this can be closed for the time being. Web Matrix should look like Figure 1.

Figure 1

By default at the top of Web Matrix there are a number of menus which allow access to some of the functions of the software.

Down the left hand side you should see the Toolbox which will probably be greyed out as you don’t currently have any pages open. If you can’t see the Toolbox then this can be opened by selecting “View” and then “Toolbox” from the File Menu or alternatively by pressing F2. The toolbox can be toggled on and off as needed but assuming that you have sufficient space on your desktop you are advised to leave this open much of the time. The toolbox will be used when pages are open to drag and drop controls onto the web pages that you are developing. This will save you considerable typing through the development of your web application.

Down the right hand side you will see the workspace (Figure 2) which will show you the directory structure of your workstation. If you haven’t already done so you can expand a view of your local drives by clicking on the plus sign next to the drive letter to view any subfolders which may be present. You should at this stage be able to see the project folder for the application that we created in the last tutorial Creating your first ASP.Net web application (mine is called “rras”). If you expand this folder you will see the home page (default.aspx) that we created in our last tutorial. At the base of the workspace you will see a number of tabs which can be used to move between different functions. The most important of these is the data tab which will allow you a view of any data connections which you have created on this workstation. This section also allows the creation of new data connections. Down the right hand side but below the workspace is the properties box. This may also be greyed out at present and will only be active when you have a control or other feature selected which has properties to display.

Figure 2

The centre area of Web Matrix is reserved for displaying any files that you have open or are working on.

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