No Resource Expressions in Skins

In ASP.NET 2.0, skins and themes are a great way to give server controls a consistent look throughout a web app. It is rightfully suggested that skins contain control declarations with properties related to the layout and look-and-feel only. Behavioral attributes should not appear in skins.

Case in point: the other day I wanted to create a skin for the Wizard control and assign it “localized” text for the Previous, Next, Cancel and Finish buttons. I wanted these buttons initialized from a resource file and “translated” on the fly:

<asp:Wizard runat="server" 
  FinishCompleteButtonText="<%$ Resources: WebResources,Foo_Bar%>">
</asp:Wizard>

It appears, no code blocks (<%…%>) are allowed in skins. I don’t know if resource expressions can be considered code blocks per se, but the parser treats them this way. However, this much works:

<asp:Wizard runat="server" FinishCompleteButtonText="Foo bar">
</asp:Wizard>

I think button text is as presentational an aspect as it can get, and—in my opinion—restriction on resource expressions should be relaxed. Otherwise, the only way to give the Wizard a consistent look is to subclass from it and use the derived class in its stead. Not a bad way out, but it’s a different ball game.

By the way, there’s a subtle issue with maintaining control state in subclassed controls. But this is a subject for another post.

P.S. I will be presenting on the topic of localization at the NJ Code Camp this coming week-end.

Did you look into the new "implicit localization" framework in ASP.NET 2.0? Without having testet this with skins, but the meta:resourcekey attribute seems to handle theese types of localization well in most cases. http://www.theserverside.net/tt/articles/showarticle.tss?id=LocalizationPractices

For implicit localization you'd need a control ID, and this is something you do not put in skin files.

I take it back. I confused it with resourcekey. Still, I prefer to stay away from local resource files. The thought of dragging a resource file for each page makes me uncomfortable.

I tried this with localized resources, it seemed to ignore the meta:resourcekey

meta:resourcekey is ignored in skin-files. That makes skin-files useless when you working with localized pages.