Here are some particulars on the ASP.NET 1.1 project and the problems I'm having as a reference for Scott Guthrie, who stepped up as my White Knight to take a look-see. I'll be sending Scott the VS2003 project.zip as he requested after I finish this post. Sorry I can't post the source zip here as well, but anything I find out from ScottGu, so will you. It goes without saying how much I appreciate Scott's help, and hopefully many of us will learn how to fish as a result of his gracious efforts.
As I said I would do, I pared down the project to its bare bones to highlight the two issues I'm having:
- The first issue is pretty prevalent and discussed on this forums.asp.net thread and elsewhere. Classes in the \app_code directory cannot reference classes outside of the \app_code area. Here's my VS2005 screenshot of the reference error.
- I built web wizards in 1.1 that inherit from a System.Web.UI.Page base class. The base class cannot create instances of simple ASP.NET controls (textboxes, htmlTables, etc.) NullReferenceExceptions. Here's the screenshot. This was not an issue in VS2003. What I did in VS2005 to get to this point took some effort: I excluded the \app_code abstract stub class causing the reference error, modified its derived page class slightly--removing overrides, mostly, went through the project file-by-file to fix "The type 'SomeCodeBehindFile' already contains a definition for txtName" (screenshot), and other misc issues to successfully compile it.
I modified the 1.1 web project to be completely standalone and requiring no database connection. It should look out-of-the-ZIP like this, with a simple menu default.aspx and capable of displaying the sample wizards. This VS2003 IDE screenshot describes the project and its essential logic.
One sidenote on the \app_code abstract stub issue. There are four wizards--two project wizards and two proposal wizards--each inherited from their respective base class. Yet if you look at the project immediately post-migration wizard, you'll see a single abstract class stub: wizprojupd (the Project Update Wizard.) There is nothing different in the Project Update wizard from the New Project wizard or the New Proposal and Proposal Update wizards. Where are those stubbies??? Why did the migration wizard only create a stub for wizprojupd, and it being unable to reference its base class?
There it is. My ASP.NET 1.1-to-2.0 story, and I'm stickin' with it. It's out of our hands now...