TimothyHumphrey.WebControls 1.4
After a long long long delay I've finally released version 1.4 of my web controls! The most developed control in it is the MainMenu, which you can tell from the name is a menu control for ASP.NET. Why release it when ASP.NET 2.0 already has a menu control?
The answer is somewhat involved. The prime reason is that I intended to release version 1.4 back in 2004! I had already started work on it when life situations got in the way to refocus my attention elsewhere. I'm now free of those events so I decided to finish what I started so long ago -- since I had invested a lot of work in it.
A secondary reason is that I still think the MainMenu has a place in the ASP.NET world despite there now being a native menu control. I like the architecture of the MainMenu. I know I designed it so I'm biased but I really think it's a good one. It doesn't render static menus, rather it's more of an engine and plug-ins provide the functionality. I like the inheritance model it uses, since it really reduces the amount of code needed to make a menu while still providing flexibility to customize individual portions when needed. And the client-side scripting environment is rich as well.
One thing it doesn't do is use templates to create a menu like the native ASP.NET menu does, but it does provide for what I term custom rendering. Basically, as long as the IDs specified for menus or items in the XML have a match on the page the MainMenu can manipulate them. So you can create a "menu" in whatever way you choose and it can still be manipulated. So, for example, you could have a list of items rendered with <li> tags and these would be "items" while the parent <ul> tag would be the "menu", you could then specify standard menus with each <li> being its parent item. This effect is used on the central list of items on my home page. In the list of MainMenu samples there's a sample where there are page headers and these can be clicked to hide or show their content. This sample actually uses the same concept of custom rendering mentioned here except it's using a different plug-in to handle the interactivity.
I still want to develop the MainMenu further as I still think it has relevance. It'll target ASP.NET 2.0, or 3, and I plan on making it simpler to use. I also have other controls I want to add to the collection. In any case, hopefully I've learned how to balance work and personal life, or I should say hobbies and personal life 
, so it won't take another 2 years between versions.
TimothyHumphrey.WebControls