ASP.NET Localization - Pitfalls

I've been playing with ASP.NET Localization features lately and I have mixed feelings about it. I mean, the Localization features of ASP.NET are great, but you have to be very careful not to mess up.

Visual Studio 2005 allows for easy localization of a page or a control via the Tools->Generate Local Resource menu item. I have tried this one on the source view of the page (the view that I most often work with). The problem is that it does not work from this view!!! The error message is:

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Microsoft Visual Studio
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Source view does not support resource generation. Switch to design view to generate resources.
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OK
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Ooook. I thought that we have to separate presentation from logic but I suppose this is an exception from the rule. No wonder it was so hard to remove "the feature" of reformating the code after switching from source view to design view in Visual Studio 2003 if they have a code with such high quality. There is simply no separation between the model and the view so problems are to be expected.

So I have switched to the design view and on my sample page, with only a GridView with few collumns, everything worked fine. I've got the App_LocalResources folder and a Default.aspx.resx file in it and every localizable property was already in there. The aspx markup was also modified - meta:resourcekey attributes have been added to all relevant places. Nice? Not so, unfortunately :-(.

I have tried the same technique on a real page from a real project. On the page, there were a couple of my custom controls. Invoking the Generate Local Resource function on such a page made a lot of mess with the html/aspx code. Some controls have been added as inner controls etc. This is probably the very reason why cybercrypt15/glenn writes that you should not use the Generate Local Resource feature.

If you do all the work manually (wich is not such a big task after all - just add a meta:resourcekey attribute where necessary), you will find that Localization is really a nice feature.

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