Need a menu? A forum for your site? A rich text box for a contact page?
Here’s a quick list of free controls and source code packs for ASP.NET that I just couldn’t live without:
UI: TimothyHumphrey.WebControls
Simple to code, simple to deploy, Timothy Humphrey has produced a collection of controls offering cross-browser menus (which can even be built from CSS), frames, and an anti-spam mail link. Code output is concise and tidy, which is quite a rarity for menu controls!
Forum Software: ASP.NET Forums
Written by Microsoft, and used on the official ASP.NET web site, this forum software is quick to install, feature-rich and can sit up there with any of those PHP boards.
Input: FreeTextBox
This is my favourite control of all. Slick, immensely powerful, and now works in Mozilla and Firefox, FreeTextBox is a WYSIWYG editor for your users. You can even print from the control, save to RTF, open an RTF, heck it’s an editor inside your web page for just 1 line of code on your part.
Blogging: DasBlog
DasBlog is a free blogging solution by newtelligence. With all the features you’d expect, such as Trackbacks, pingbacks, Blogger API implementations, and a zippy cache engine, this is the tool to get your message out to the people!
Any freebies you can’t live without? Drop a comment!
Philip MiseldinePhilip is a Computer Science PhD student at Liverpool John Moores University. He's still not mastered guitar tabs, never finished Mario, and needs a haircut.
