toolpanel tutorial

TOC

Installation
Basics
More Complex ToolPanel Functionality
Skinning ToolPanels
Using Variables

(NOTE: this is obviously a work in progress... look for it to be complete around the end of the first week in Feb.)

Installation 

Installation into Visual Studio.NET is a snap if you've ever worked with 3rd Party .NET Server Controls.

I recommend creating a new ToolBox Tab (this helps make sure you don't confuse ToolPanel Controls with normal ASP.NET controls.. the icons are similar enough that you could make easily make a mistake) as follows:

1) Right Click into your ToolBar and Add Tab

2) Name your Tab

3) Right Click into your newly created Tab, and Add/Remove Items

4) Browse out to where you've dumped the AngryPets.WebControls.ToolPanelControls.dll and Select the .dll

5) VS.NET chugs for a few seconds, then shows you that it's found a bunch of controls to add to your tab, just hit the OK button and you'll now have a full-blown Suite of ToolPanel Controls that you can drag and drop onto your designer.

If you're not using VS.NET, or hate the way the designer munges your markup, then adding ToolPanel Controls can be done as follows:

1) Copy the AngryPets.WebControls.ToolPanelControls.dll into your /bin directory.

2) Add a Control Directive, linking to the AngryPets Controls.

3) From here you're ready to start adding controls into your markup. (NOTE: at present there is no .xsd file available (which is used to provide markup intellisense).)

Simple ToolPanels 

At this point I'm just going to assume you know how to add ASP.NET controls via drag/drop... and we'll just work on how to wire up ToolPanel Controls. For our first exercise, we'll just create a simple ToolPanel showing some marked-up text with a tiny bit of formatting. (From there it's really just a question of showing what options are available... and then a bit of time on advanced topics -- at which point mastery of ToolPanels will be complete.)