Server Side Includes

I've been looking at sites about User Controls but was wondering if someone could give me an explanation of them in their own words and maybe point me in the right direction for using them to include a top and left hand side on every page.

MorningZ wrote: I wouldn't even remotely recommend using SSI anymore... all comes down to: if you are going to learn .NET, then code in .NET User controls are a whole nuther world.. they are replacable/selectable (unlike SSI and how many posts do we see with: "how can i selectively include files" in which the answer is always: you can't), plus they are cachable (<<== very killer stuff, and if you want more info, i can give it)

 Yeah, I wish it was that simple.  We have this problem where we have hundreds of pages in ASP, and all our headers and footers are ASP includes, and then we hired a developer to create something for our site... and he decided to write it in ASP.NET... even though our site is in ASP!

It's been a nightmare trying to get ASP and ASP.NET on the same page.  We finally figured out how to do it, but it wasn't obvious at all.  We actually have to call the ASP header and footer, and then insert the results of the call into the ASP.NET page.  A weird way of doing it, but it works.

( Here's the link BTW:
http://authors.aspalliance.com/stevesmith/articles/netscrape .asp )

We don't have the time or the manpower to maintain an ASP header and footer and also a ASP.NET header and footer for the same website, much less rewrite all the ASP stuff.

But at least the nice thing about all this is that now we can use the same technique to put an ASP header and footer around a Perl Script!  We just have to make the perl script an ASP.NET page and then use the technique explained in the link above.

I already have plans on converting a couple perl scripts to ASP.NET so we could include our ASP headers and footers.

I know that is not how we are supposed to do it, but we are not going to rewrite our entire website.

Diep-Vriezer wrote: It does slows a bit down, since more DLL's are called (my theory). Anyway, if it works,

It was either that or make him rewrite it in ASP.  And we have a deadline, so that wasn't really an option either.  And our preliminary tests seem to work out fine with this method.  We may eventually come up with a better solution, but we are kinda under the gun.