You don't have to abandon third-party controls like telerik - just use the WebFormsViewEngine.

Billy Im surprised you didnt pick Monorail up sooner

Ive built a website that has some monorail, some aspnet. Monorail was cool to me, when I needed to localize some pages on this site, but I'm not letting go of standard ASPnet, for the simple reason it plays nice with everything else out there, from custom controls to the IDE to the mountains of existing documentation.

To me, Monorail is like Vista. Its got some cool ideas, I think everyone will eventually use it, or something like it, but its got some compatibility issues that will be ironed out as the users grow in numbers.

BTW, Im almost done with an article re-write on NHibernate performance Ill let you know soon -p

I've been using my Telerik controls with the NVelocity view engine. This technique won't work for all the Telerik controls, but some.

I programatically create instances of the Telerik controls and then manually call their RenderControl method to output (ultimately) to a string, which can be embedded in the view.

Billy, can I join your team  :)

Billy,

I assume so because like you say, it's just dealing with strings. About the only thing that would not work is anything that requires ViewState and postbacks.

@pete w

I'm just curious to know what "compatibility" issues you're referring to...

Yeah Joey to answer your question about  "compatibility", well,

I like the ASP.NET's way of making custom controls with event delegates and callbacks. I like user controls and server controls.

I like the quick convenience for the ajax update panels.

Devils advocate view, compatibility also means a change in standards. I choose a technology when its the right tool for the job, but sometimes monorail is overkill for small fast projects, quick prototypes (ala visual designer; laugh if you like),  maintaining some mature and large applications. Can I make everyone else on my team excited to change their web-design approach and refactor because I found this cool new framework?

So maybe compatibility isnt quite the right word, but these are the challenges I've experienced that stop me from using monorail more often.

I just wish they'd release a new .msi with an updated wizard for nhibernate 1.2 GA

I've been waiting quite some time.

Pulling builds and hacking the registry makes me wonder if it's quite ready for any production environment despite the hype....

What production environment has anything to do with changing registry entries for the IDE wizard?

Rb2IQ9