I spend a wonderful time during my presentation for NED.net on "Master Pages and Themes in ASP.NET 2.0." This is the first time that I am not going to say that "the speaker was absolutely amazing and the presentation was just awesome." I am not being too modest, this is what usally happens when you are speaking for the first time. This was just the beginning and I have to walk a long way to become a good speaker.

I started by giving a very brief introduction about ASP.NET 2.0. Talked about the Visual Studio enhancements, new compilation and code-beside model, new deployment methods etc. Then I moved toward the main topic of presentation "Themes in the new version of ASP.NET." I have shown demos all along the slides to give the audience a better look at how to use these new technologies that are introduced in ASP.NET 2.0 for the first time. I really like the concept of applying themes to the sites which really ease the burden of giving "CSSClass" or "Class" refrences to all the contents of your site. You just have to include <% @ Page Theme="SmokeAndGlass" %> and thats all. All your controls will give a consistent look to your site.

Then we moved on towards the Master Pages. Master Pages are introduced for the first time in ASP.NET 2.0 and its all about giving a consistent layout to your website yet with almost no line of code at all. You just have to define the looks of your site in the master page with <% @ Mater %> tag, define the layout of your pages in just one file and throw some contentplaceholders which will be used to pass contents from content pages <% @ Page MasterPageFile="Master.master" %>. No more usercontrols for defining the layout of the site and placing the controls in all of you pages one at a time. You can also nest 2 or more master pages together to make the figure a bit more complex yet recommended for big project and portal style websites.

It was a nice start for me today and I have learned one thing. Never throw a bad joke during your presentation, you will loose some pretty looking audiences :) . The audience were amazing, they throwed some really good questions and have rated my 3.5 out of 5 which is not bad for my first attempt. I want to thank Usman especially for working with me in the lab and helping me in setting up the machine for my ugly demos, Sir Saqib Ilyas for allowing me to use his laptop and helping me during the arrangements, Faisal Nasim, Muhammad Yahya, Sarfaraz Soomro, Fahad Majeed for doing all the nasty work behind the scene and arranging the foods and drinks and the feedbacks offcourse. Last but certainly not the least, I would like to thank Hammad and Adnan bhai for being there for my support and helping me in the Q&A session. You guys just are just awesome and this event wouldn't have been possible without your help.

Thank you once again!

You can download the slides from here. I have also included some Theme files along with the slides. You just have to copy them in the Global Themes folder which I mentioned during the presentation and you are all set to go. All previous presentations can also be download from here.