C#: Build plugin/modular web application with Sharp Arcitecture - c#

I'm thinking about the possibility to build a "modular" or plugin-based web application based on Sharp Architecture.
The "base" application would only handle user authentication and a control panel for administrators where they could register new modules.
Then, for example, lets say we have three modules, "Customer", "Project" and "Inventory". Project would depend on Customer, because a Project needs an owner. So the customer A should be able to use Customer and Project, while Customer B only is interested in the Inventory application. These would be "installed" from the base application control panel and then integrated to the web application so users can go from the Project module to a page in the Customer module by following a link from the, for example, Project Owner page.
Each of these three modules would of course have multiple classes and UI pages.
Does anyone have any experience about this? Is there any articles covering the topic? Is it even possible to do this in a "good" way with Sharp Architecture?


Take a look at Orchard Project, it's a new Microsoft-backed open source .NET based CMS. It's very extensible so you should be able to build out a complex application and not get bogged down with user and content management. It gives you a good base for things like localization, seo, even multi-tenancy.
It's similar to SharpArchitecture in that it uses many of the same design principles and techniques and is built on other popular open source projects like:
ASP.NET MVC
AutoFac
NHibernate
Lucene .NET
jQuery

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I'm currently working on a project which aims to deliver a "low-code" solution for integrating workflows. I'm very impressed by Elsa since it already comes with a lot of functionality that I was looking for.
Since the projcet goes into the direction of "low-code" the center of user Interaction will be the Dashboard/Designer.
I was wondering if it's possible to modify the components the designer uses? E.g. I'd like to integrate a Component that let's the user define the Workflow-Name and other input parameters when the "Create Workflow"-Button is clicked or remove existing activites or edit the toolbox in general.
I know that the components that are used by default are defined here
<body>
<elsa-studio-root server-url="#serverUrl" monaco-lib-path="_content/Elsa.Designer.Components.Web/monaco-editor/min">
<elsa-studio-dashboard/>
</elsa-studio-root>
</body>
But I don't know where to find the monaco-lib-path neither if I'm able to edit what I'll find there. I'm very new to ASP.NET and web development in genereal, so I'll be very thankful if somebody can help me.

Currently, there are not that many features to facilitate UI customization, there are some capabilities for customizing activities like their icons as described here.
In Elsa Roadmap V3.0
there's an item to make the dashboard modular & themeable. But until its implementation, you have the option to fork the designer which is developed using stenciljs, and make your desired changes, or even create your UI from scratch and just consume the Elsa API.

In a ASP.NET Webforms App - The purpose of Site.Mobile.Master and the ViewSwitcher.ascx control

I normally delete ViewSwitcher.ascx and Site.Mobile.Master from my project whenever I create a new WebApp using the default Webforms template.
After researching I believe the Site.Mobile.Master and ViewSwitcher.ascx are used along with the new Friendly Urls feature.
I am looking for some information on why Microsoft added these files to the default webforms template and how/when I would go about using them. I usually create web applications that run on both desktop and mobile using the same master page.
It seems like a scenario when I would want to use Site.Mobile.Master is when I want to completely separate mobile from desktop. Meaning I would have 2 files like this:
AboutUsMobile.aspx (uses Site.Mobile.Master)
AboutUs.aspx (uses Site.Master)
I believe the ViewSwitcher control simply allows the user to leave mobile and switch to the desktop page.
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Use WPF component from external .exe

Here's the situation:
We have an existing .NET executable that contains an application using WPF components (dialogs and forms). This executable was created using Gupta Team Developer 6.1, but I'm not sure that is relevant to my question. We'd like to re-use some of these forms in a C#-application, but this is proving difficult.
When we include the external components, either in XAML or by instantiating them in code, they look OK (i.e. fields, buttons, layout etc.), but the event wiring seems to be missing. Nothing happens when pressing buttons and tables/grids are empty.
I've read previous articles on this site on using external WPF components, but they all mention external assemblies compiled as control libraries. Are we trying to do something that's not really possible?
P.S As an experiment we've tried to instantiate the App-object from the executable directly and this brings up a fully functional version of the entire application (well, duh), but we'd really like to be able to pick and choose from the individual forms/dialogs.

Attach wpf view dll to existing wpf exe

I have a WPF executable and I wish to make provisions to it, so that later,
someone from outside might modify or add another window or page
using dll totally separate from my solution.
For short, I wish to make my wpf windows or pages pluggable. How do I do this?

Prism's support modular, on-demand-loading of modules and other parts of your application, in it's core.
you can use MEF framework to make pluggable modules (windows and pages), as it's fully integrated with Prism.
You can find examples and more information in the following resources:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/188054/An-Introduction-to-Managed-Extensibility-Framework
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/37579/Managed-Extensibility-Framework-Part-2
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/432069/Simple-MEF-Application-for-Beginners
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/232868/MEF-Features-with-Examples

I'm about to start using ASP.NET MVC2 for my web application

I have a pretty big web application that I created last year using ASP.NET webforms. It has two parts: Admin and Client (each one a project inside a single solution). Admin logs in as you would expect and manages the clients. Clients log in and manage themselves. SQL Server back end. It relies heavily on MasterPages and LINQ. It has 2 class libraries, one for my methods (authentication, security, encryption, etc.) and another with dbml files for linq that both admin and client project reference.
Now I really want to convert this to MVC 2. I know I'll have to rewrite the front end (not a problem, looking forward to it). I can reference my current class libraries and modify them as I need. My main concerns are my forms and controls. I'd really like to stay away from the major asp controls and use jquery for everything if possible (especially the presentation layer. I'm just not sure how to go about doing this. I was also told jquery is great for 'parsing and updating the DOM' but I've never done this either and not sure where to start (why do this over LINQ?).
Another issue I struggled with was the size of my main table. It has 109 fields in it, and my customer thinks all of them need to be available on screen (or as many as possible, especially in the grid). I had to break up my entry/edit form into 5 tabs (all web controls). My grids have sorting, grouping, export to excel, etc... I would really like to find a grid that lets you inline edit individual cells when double clicked. Would it be better to use jquery for grids? I can break that large table into relational tables if needed (probably will do that anyway).
Any advice from anyone who's done similar will be greatly appreciated. I just bought the book "Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 Framework, Second Edition" and I have a great jQuery ebook I'm working with.
Thank you guys!
EDIT: Should have mentioned I used Telerik WebControls for my previous web forms project so I'm familiar with them. I had no idea their MVC suite was free (I've paid quite a bit for the webform controls).

For grids I can recommend the free Telerik mvc controls. They have good support for ajax binding paging, sort, edit, parent-child etc.
This combined with a few widgets from jQuery ui (tabs, dialog) should put you on the right track as far as your presentation layer is concerned.

Adding to RedSquare, the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC are free and open source (under GPLv2). That essentially means the Extensions for free for "free" projects (projects you're not trying to sell). If you're trying to sell and make money from your software, we have a commercial license, too, to support that.
Today, the Extensions for MVC include 8 extensions: Grid, Calendar, DatePicker, Menu, NumericTextBox, PanelBar, TabStrip, and TreeView.
Additionally, 3 new Extensions are available in beta: Editor, ComboBox, and Window. (Official release towards the end of August.)
The goal of the Extensions is to make it easier to build rich MVC Views, similar to what you've done in the past in WebForms. MVC is very different than WebForms, though, so be careful when making the transition to avoid the "traps" of thinking in WebForms mode. For example, there are no PostBacks or ViewState in MVC, so some things require more deliberate code in MVC.
Finally, as a word of caution for "pure" JavaScript components, remember that they do not support any scenario where JavaScript is disable or not executed (common examples: web crawlers, accessible browsers). If accessibility or SEO are concerns, Server + Client UI controls like the Telerik Extensions can be a bonus.
Hope that helps.

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