WilsonDotNet Forums : Advanced ASP.NET

chat room that records all messages

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:43:56 GMT

All --

Please help.

I need to build (or buy) a simple chat room that records all messages and does a few other standard things.

The requirements are...

All messages posted to chat must be recorded to some centralized, persistent storage location (such as a database or the file system) for administrative review on-demand.
The Chat must be embeddable on a web page. That is, the Chat must not require a separate window to run in.
Chat membership must be connected to a standard ASP.NET Application Services database.
The Chat must reuse the currently logged-in users credentials, to avoid having to login again for the chat.
The Chat must support 0...300 chat rooms.
The Chat must support 0...300 users per room.
The Chat must provide functionality for endusers to create their own private rooms and invite 0...N users and 0...N user groups.
The Chat must support Ignore, KickOut, and CloseRoom funcationality, based on permissions distributed to enduser groups based on admin configurable settings.
The Chat must support Plain-Text messages. (If the Chat supports HTML messages, then that is a plus, but not a requirement.)
The Chat must not degrade in performance for up to 200 concurrent users. (Some performance degradation for >200 concurrent users is acceptable.)
If the product is purchased, it should be very easy to setup, configure, deploy, administer, and it should cost less-than $500 for a single license for a single deployment to a single server.

That is ALL the Chat needs to do. Anything else is just fluff for this project.

My questions are...

(A) Do you know of a product that can do all this?

(B) Do you know of some sample code that shows how to save the Chat input to a database?

(C) Do you have any ideas as to how one should implement saving the chat input to a database?

All comments, suggestings, ideas (even wild-ideas), guesses, hints, links, and pointers are welcome.

Thank you.

-- Mark Kamoski

printing from .aspx page

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 01:57:06 GMT

It is true that this is a browser setting that is not in the control of the developer... unless you convince your visitor to install and ActiveX control. We considered the MeadCo ScriptX (meadroid.com) product (for IE only) that allowed controlling a variety of print preferences, but didn't want to require the install.
King

UserControls and FormView

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 08:47:51 GMT

Derek,

How in the world did you reference an User Control inside of a FormView? I been racking my brain on this for over a week.

TonyP

How to step into / through code from Response.Redirect

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:53:21 GMT

I can't think of anything without seeing some code.

Good luck, Paul Wilson

How to step into / through code from Response.Redirect

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:51:35 GMT

I have a ASP.NET 2.0 page that redirects to a second page. Both pages are inherited from a common base page. The first page sets the value of a session variable which is used by the second page. In some scenarios, when I examine the session variable in the Base Page's Page Load event, its value is Nothing, even though it had a value immediately before the Response.Redirect.

The first page essentially has two buttons: one to process the page and redirect it to the next page and a second button combined with an upload control which allows the user to upload an image to the server and display it on the same page before processing the entire page.

If no image is uploaded, the the session variable isn't lost. If an image is uploaded, then the session variable is nothing. Based on other tests, I think this is due to an error in my own code. But I don't know how to step through from the response.redirect to the next executable line or find where the session variable is being reset.

Can you suggest anything? Thanks in advance. I truly appreciate any help you can provide.

-- ZLA

web reference the custom object return type is cast to DataSet in .NET 2.0

Tue, 23 May 2006 16:50:26 GMT

All--

Please help.

I was dismayed that when I added a web reference the custom object return type is cast to DataSet in .NET 2.0.

This was the behaviour in .NET 1.1.

I was told that they fixed this in .NET 2.0 and that WSDL would recognize a custom type and would not simply cast every uknown type to a DataSet when it generates the proxy class.

So... I know that I can fix the proxy class by hand... but then I cannot autogenerate the proxy class because manual changes will be overwritten... so then I will have to manage the proxy class manually which will take a lot of time... and I don't want to return a DataSet... and I don't want to return a String... and I don't want to return an XmlNode... because what I really need to do is return a specific custom object type... so, what is the solution here?

Thoughts?

Please advise.

Thank you.

--Mark Kamoski

UserControls and FormView

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 11:58:37 GMT

Email me the code -- as simplified as possible.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

UserControls and FormView

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 11:56:11 GMT

Hi Paul, (and any one else that might be able to help)

I have a page with a very simple UserControl on it (basically it just displays some text) the text is set in the Parent page in the page load e.g.

Page_Load( ...) { UcMyControl.Str= "1";}

and in the Page_Load() of the user control I set a Label.Text = "Hi " + Str;

This just causes the text to be displayed on my page as "Hi 1" and all works fine

But when I add a FormView to my main page and put the UserControl into the <edittemplateItem> of the form view along with a "Cancel" button link

I now use (Templates_UcTest1)FormView1.FindControl( "UcTest1" ); in my main Page_Load method and then set the Str property, and this works fine, the first time the page is displayed.

But when I click the cancel button (which esentially just does a post back) the UserControl Page_Load method now gets called twice, one the first time it is after the main page Page_Load method and the Str property is properly set, but on the second call the Str property is set back to "" as it is like a new User Control Instance, and as a result the text displayed on my main page is just "Hi" and not "Hi 1" as it should be.

I have tried loads of things and I am at a complete loss as to what might causes this. I have tried setting AutoEventWireup to false in both the main page and user control and done all the event hookups manually but the Page Load still gets called twice.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Derek

The above is a simplification of the problem i am having and I am currently pulling the code apart to strip down the the bare esentials which I could email you if you have a moment to look at it.

thanks again.

Using Web admin tool on deployed application

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:13:28 GMT

I have been working on a project for a few weeks that involves permissions and roles and have been using the web admin tool to maintain the roles and users and such on my local testing environment. My problem is that I want to deploy the application but I am not sure how to get the web admin tool to work on the deployed application since it won't exist as a virtual directory like it did on my local test environment. I read on msdn that one can use aspnet_regiis to configure the webadmin tool but when running aspnet_regiis with the help parameter i see no parameters that involve the webadmin tool. Anybody know what I should be doing?

Loading images from class lib (assembly)

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 18:40:57 GMT

Paul,

Many, many, many thanks! Using the HttpContext in my class lib (assembly), I was able to use the Server.MapPath, and load the image. If it's (HttpContext) null, I simply load it from the local file system. Here's the (abridged) code:

private Bitmap GetTheLogo(string p_logoFileName)

{

Bitmap l_Bitmap;

System.Web.HttpContext l_Context = HttpContext.Current;

if (l_Context == null)

l_Bitmap = new Bitmap("../images/PDF/" + p_logoFileName);

else

l_Bitmap= new Bitmap(l_Context.Server.MapPath("~/images/" + p_logoFileName));

return l_Bitmap;

}

Thank again!

Regards,

Sean

Loading images from class lib (assembly)

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 16:37:14 GMT

Hi Paul,

Wow. Thanks for the quick response. I think I should explain my predicament a little further. My webpage (reportgen.aspx) calls a static function in my PDF generator class library called GetFleetReport(id, anotherid, etc). This library returns a document (PDF), which is then streamed to Response. The class library has no comprehension of what is calling it. It just creates the PDF doc, and returns the doc. Within the document creation methods, there's a call to LoadImage(blah.jpg), that returns a System.Drawing.Image. This LoadImage method needs to determine whether it;s on a webserver or desktop.

Maybe, if I explain my current work around. I've rearranged my method signature to accept an Image. I now Load the image in the Page (reportgen.aspx), and pass it into the static method. Similarly the WinForms NUnit test app does the same.

I'd like to move this functionality into the class library, as I will be retrieving the image name from a db now (in the class library), and will want the PDF generator class to simply load the image. (there's no Page or context in the class library - or can I access the ResolveUrl somehow from the HttpContext?

I hope this is a little clearer. Maybe I'll just read the image object from the DB, and suffer the maintenance coding.

Thanks very much for your help.

Regards,

Sean.

Loading images from class lib (assembly)

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 15:09:06 GMT

Hi Sean:

The easiest way to test if you're in a web app is to check if HttpContext.Current is not null. Once you know you are in a web app then you have to think paths relative to your web app. ResolveUrl is a method on the page class that I use all the time to turn an app-relative path into a url. Server.MapPath gets you the underlying physical path, but that isn't going to be something that you'll ever expose externally since its all about urls. So as long as your image directory is a sub-directory of your web-app (or a virtual directory you've mapped in), you need to simply go with ResolveUrl. If your image directory is not accessible via url, then you'll need to create a page or handler that grabs a stream from the physical path and outputs it to the http response stream. I'm not sure if I've completely understood your dilemma, so if this didn't help then you'll need to send me more details.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Loading images from class lib (assembly)

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 12:59:48 GMT

Hi All,

I'm a predicament at the moment. I have a series of Report class libraries, that I call from my Web Application. The reason that I have these reports in a separate assembly, is so that I can test them independently of the web app, in WinForms applications. This works great, as I can generate PDFs, images, etc, without having to login to my webapp, navigate to the page, etc. OK.

My problem now is that my reports now need to load images (for header logos, etc). Testing my assembly in winforms is easy, as I just load the image from the filesystem. Not so easy when it comes to ASP.NET. If I use the Assembly class (GetExecutingAssembly), I can retrieve directory and context info, so I can determine if its being run on the web or on the desktop. However, directory information usually returns the running directory, which is the .NET system directory on the server.

Firstly, is this the best way of determining which platform the assembly is running on (ASP.NET or Winforms), and secondly, more importantly, how can I then load the image from the directory. Server.MapPath (more specifically, the Server context) is not available in the assembly. Currently I use a HTTPWebRequest to retrieve the image from the fully qualified URL if in ASP.NET and LoadImage if on Winforms.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Sean

Page Expiration

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 16:13:10 GMT

Hi Thagi:

I believe you'll need to use the javascript setTimeout function.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Page Expiration

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 23:20:01 GMT

Hi Paul

I'm building a web site using asp.net (C#). I want the opened page to expire if the user is inactive for a certain period of time e.g. 20minutes, and when the page is expired I want to redirect the user to login Page.

Thanks Thagi

Mixing Forms and Windows Security

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 02:55:26 GMT

Hi all,
Can someone get me step by step as I try it out for two days and got no where. Sometime all my images gone and when i try tweak around the configuration/IIS , my web will start give a pop up login.

regards
ady.

class to keep applicatoin worker process alive

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 09:56:49 GMT

Hi Craig:

See http://authors.aspalliance.com/paulwilson/articles/?id=12. Keep in mind that asp.net apps are never guaranteed to stay up without recycling, and its generally a good idea to let them recycle periodically anyhow. So that simply means that while you can use this to run tasks while the app is running, and while it will help keep it running, in the end if you need a guarantee then you should use a Scheduled Task or a Windows Service.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

class to keep applicatoin worker process alive

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 07:21:17 GMT

hi paul,

we've been using your O/R Mapper for quite some time and are really happy with it. I remember reaeding you have some component that the Global.asax.cs inherits from, which keeps the asp.net WP alive so that

a) You can use timers to schedule tasks within asp.net
b) Pages don't have to recompile.

Where can I download this component and what sort of timer should i use? We need some kind of basic scheduling system in our application.

Thanks,
Craig

hide the URL

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 07:22:23 GMT

Make the underlying physical file streamed out from an ASP.NET page -- that way the use just sees the ASP.NET page.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

hide the URL

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:48:05 GMT

I have a downloadable file which i dont want the clients to see where it is physically on the server. I want my download.aspx page to select the file and give them a save as dialog without any chances of the client knowing where the file was located.

ASP.NET 2.0 assemblyinfo

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 15:10:22 GMT

I don't believe you're missing anything -- and you weren't alone in using features that were dropped. The web deployment project enables most everything (if not everything) missing, although, and they are also re-adding a 2003 style project after all the complaints.

By the way, while I used some things that went missing, I can't really say that I miss AssemblyInfo stuff for ASP.NET projects, so you have me curious as to what you need in particular if you don't mind sharing. Its certainly vital for compiled libraries, but ASP.NET apps are of course a little different, so I'm intriuged . . .

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Mixed mode login and single sign-on?

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 12:21:00 GMT

Thanks! I agree with all the possible config scenario snaffus this approach isn't so hot.

Thanks,

Kevin

ASP.NET 2.0 assemblyinfo

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 10:35:12 GMT

Hi Paul
One of the little changes in vs.net 2005 Web apps is the lack of assemblyinfo.cs - which we used fairly extensively, such as to set the version number. I looked a lot in the online docs, and finally posted to the msdn newsgroup for asp.net; the response being that I need to use Scott's beta tool.
Am I missing something? We cant have been the only shop using assemblyinfo.
Thanks, Mark

ASP.NET 2.0

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 18:16:30 GMT

First, keep in mind that MS walkthroughs are seldom ever best practice quality. That said, I would probably use a property in the MasterPage if it were related to the MasterPage itself.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

ASP.NET 2.0

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 17:33:51 GMT

Thanks, Paul.

Where I was going with this is that in the Master pages "walkthrough" in the online docs, they display in an aspx page/content section a property set in the master.cs file; in other words, there were using the master.cs sort of like a base page. Is there an advantage to doing it that way over a base page inheriting System.Web.UI.Page?

ASP.NET 2.0

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 07:35:40 GMT

Hey Mark:

Nothing has changed in my mind -- I still have a base page class for non-UI things, and a master page for the UI. I find the main use for partial classes to be for code gen, but I don't do a lot of that myself.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Mixed mode login and single sign-on?

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 07:34:05 GMT

Hi Kevin:

It may be possible (maybe not also), but I barely did enough with it to make my former manager happy -- and I haven't messed with it since then. I don't like the mixed login system because it requires getting everything perfect in IIS, and that is not easy to coordinate (or keep working). It also ends up making the ASP.NET app hard to understand -- and easy for others to mess up. Then there's the fact the client browser may need its security settings altered to even get it to work correctly. So I think the simplicity of just having separate urls is way better -- and that can be managed to make it simpler for the end-user too. One way might be Paul Sheriff's solution (I glanced at it, but not too much), or you might have a single entry url with links to the two different logins so they don't have to remember them -- and there are probably other ways to accomplish this depending on how much you want to get complicated to make things simpler for users.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Mixed mode login and single sign-on?

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:32:57 GMT

Is it possible to use your mixed mode login as a single sign-on for an intranet?

I have your sample working on it's own but when I then try to have another sample webapp use the mixed mode sample for it's login then I can't seem to get it to work. I don't want to have this code duplicated for all my apps...

Also,

I read earlier in a post that you don't like this approach and feel it would be better to go with a dual login approach. Why do you feel this way and how would you solve this? Intranet uses windows auth and anyone else uses a single sign on form auth to a DB?

I believe that's what Paul Sheriff displayed on
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/security/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/singlesignon.asp

Is this type of approach better in your opinion?

Thanks,

Kevin

ASP.NET 2.0

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 14:14:38 GMT

With vs.net 2005 and master pages, what is the preferred architecture for (non-ui) base pages? Do I continue to put them in a class inherited by the aspx.cs/ascx.cs pages? Does the use of partial classes in any way change things?
Thanks, Mark

Paging views

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 17:10:28 GMT

Hi Mark:

There certainly are some limitations to server-side paging with Ms Sql, Access, and Oracle -- but that's more a limitation with those databases since they didn't design for server-side paging. There are a bunch of different strategies, but each is good for some cases and not others, so I chose the one I felt was best overall. Ms Sql 2005 does introduce some new capabilities, but its still not a generic server-side paging solution like most newer databases have. So the only way I know of that always works is to use a single TOP pagesize * pageindex, and then throw away all the row except for the last pagesize -- yuck.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Paging views

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:34:33 GMT

Getting: "Index was outside the bounds of the array." When paging a page >=2 on a view mapped to a persistant entity. line 37 of MSCommands.cs is the line number. Since KeyFields is empty for a view type entity. What can I do here?

Mark

Mixing Forms and Windows Security - Login Dialog

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 08:03:35 GMT

Hi Jeff:

I believe this has something to do with browser settings -- I've had many report this, and many not -- and some of reported back that it was something they were able to fix in their browser settings. I think it was in the definition of intranet vs. internet sites -- but I've never seen it myself so I'm not sure myself.

Good luck, Paul Wilson

Mixing Forms and Windows Security - Login Dialog

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 11:22:57 GMT

Paul,

Just wanted to say thanks for that great article, but I do have one question. I can't seem to get the Login Dialog to stop showing up on WinLogin.aspx. It doesn't matter which browser I use, it always pops up.

Everything works great internally, but when I try to access the site externally, the dialog pops up, which I can cancel, and then it will redirect them to WebLogin.aspx.

Any help with this would be great,
Thanks,
Jeff

Mixing Forms and Windows Security -- directories

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:03:43 GMT

Well my "objections" are not related to whether or not this type of setup will work -- it does work. And I wrote the article because in my research I saw many others asking for the same capability -- and being told it wasn't possible. My objections are more that this type of scenario represents a basic misunderstanding and the solution requires far too much configuration. Why is it a misunderstanding? Because it is very easy to just have two entry points configured -- one for intranet and extranet -- the objections of management to that simple solution are in my opinion just a lot of wishful thinking. But in the end, the article is there because I recognized a need, whether I felt it to be necessary or not.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Mixing Forms and Windows Security -- directories

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 09:42:37 GMT

Objections? I don't remember those in the MSDN article!

Mixing Forms and Windows Security -- directories

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:47:10 GMT

I'm not sure there is a best practice here. I'm not even sure I would ever willingly use the mixed security model -- it was forced upon me by a manager that wouldn't listen to my objections.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Mixing Forms and Windows Security -- directories

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:18:19 GMT

Hi. The helpful "Mixing Forms and Windows Security in ASP.NET" article on MSDN led me to this forum.

What's the best practice in terms of managing the rest of the site? Login can be an application at the root level, which means (using Visual Studio .NET) that your example files are not at http://mysite/WinLogin.aspx but at, for example, http://mysite/loginapplication/WinLogin.aspx etc.

Then further chunks of the site -- is it easiest in the long run to have them all part of one Visual Studio project or to create their own web.config's and everything under loginapplication? I'm sure there are dozens of permutations, but I can't find a "best practices" sort of reference, so anything along that line would be helpful!

Data is not refeshing

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:10:01 GMT

Looks like that fixed it. Thanks you again Paul.

Data is not refeshing

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:52:54 GMT

And now I see you other post -- GetObjectSet/Reader/Collection always hits the database, but GetObject does return an object from that is being tracked if possible. That can be changed by setting autoTrack="false" in the entity mapping (then you will have to call StartTracking and EndTracking). You can also use the IsolatedContext property to get a scope-specific instance of the ObjectSpace to avoid global tracking.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Data is not refeshing

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:48:52 GMT

That should make the difference -- and if you want it global then put it in your base page class. The only other thing that I can think of is to make sure you aren't using an output cache directive to be caching it on the server.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Data is not refeshing

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:52:12 GMT

I decided to test to see what would happen if I compared the return results using both the mapper and ADO.Net. It appears there is a latency of how fast the data is being returned from the mapper. The ADO.Net data returned immediately. Is there a cache setting for the mapper?

Data is not refeshing

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 08:46:03 GMT

Well I tried that as well as this before any HMTL is displayed:

<%

response.expires = -1
response.AddHeader("Pragma", "no-cache")
response.AddHeader("cache-control", "no-store")

%>

I don't see a change in the results. I noticed this as well. Once I arrived back at the cached page, it usually takes about five page refreshes until the new data is displayed. Is there a site wide ASP.Net setting for this?

Data is not refeshing

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 08:43:47 GMT

The browser does a lot of client-side caching, so you really need to set Response.Expires = 0. And by the way, that's just a common thing you should be aware of whether you are using ASP.NET, PHP, JSP, etc.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Data is not refeshing

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 08:01:25 GMT

Truth be told, I am not sure if it is your tool or ASP.Net in general. But I am having trouble getting new data to display imediately on my pages. Instead it displays what was on the screen previously even after doing a redirect from a different page. It almost seems like my pages are cached, but I don't have any caching enabled on my pages. I also stop checking the post back and that is not doing any good either. I then tried to disable viewstate, but that didn't work either. If I go to the page using a hyperlink control, it works fine. But if go to the page using a redirect, old data is displayed on the page.

Add row to empty datagrid for datareader source

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:42:42 GMT

I really don't use datagrids, so unless someone else happens by here, I would recommend you go to DataGridGirl.com.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Add row to empty datagrid for datareader source

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:59:04 GMT

Hi Paul. I'm hoping you can help me out.

I want my datagrid to display a row saying "0 records found" when the datasource returns zero records. I am using a datareader as the datasource.

I found this link which I have been unable to adapt: http://www.aspheute.com/english/20030909.asp. Here is my code:

Private Sub MyDataGrid_PreRender(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyDataGrid.PreRender

If MyDataGrid.Items.Count = 0 Then

Dim dgi As New DataGridItem(0, 0, ListItemType.Item)

Dim tc As New TableCell

tc.ColumnSpan = MyDataGrid.Columns.Count

dgi.Cells.Add(tc)

dgi.Cells.Item(0).Text = "no records found"

Ctype(MyDataGrid.Controls(0), Table).AddAt(1, dgi)

End If

When I try the above, the row isn't added. If I just add the datagriditem to the grid directly, it ends up outside of the table tags, so I know the datagriditem is being correctly formed.

Thanks in advance.

starting with menutree

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:50:58 GMT

Well I do have all the source code available. :)

Thanks, Paul Wilson

starting with menutree

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 02:57:10 GMT

hi paul,
i want to use menutree like u have used in your site which collapses when another menu is clicked. but don't know where to start. can you please show me how i go with starting with using it?

thanx

Posting to external website

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 16:26:51 GMT

The way I handle that on this site, since I use multiple forms with MasterPages, is to not include everything on the page template inside a form. Then I can have my other forms in other parts of the page, even having a content region set defined outside the main form but in what would otherwise be my main content area so that I can put another form there when needed. But admittedly this is going to probably be even harder with ASP.NET v2.0 since you'll probably be even more likely to have to put more elements in that main form. So it is possible, but it will definitely force you to design your page in a manner that plans for this, and that may also affect what controls you can use for things like menus. By the way, I haven't done any testing of my WebForm with ASP.NET v2.0 yet (other than a trivial test) since I've been focused on other things.

Thanks, Paul Wilson

Posting to external website

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 12:54:13 GMT

Your WebForm Control was recommended to help solve a certain design issue I have been having in porting a classic ASP site to the ASP.NET 2.0 platform.

One particular page I have is a shipment tracking page. In the classic site I display a form with a single input that returns all shipment data for that particular order. Now we have two webtools; one from UPS and one from FedEx that allows us to post information to these pages. There can be any number of these small forms on a given page based on the number of shipment locations in the given order. An example of one is here:

<form id="Form135586-0" method="post" target="_blank" action="http://wwwapps.ups.com/WebTracking/OnlineTool">
<input type="hidden" name="InquiryNumber1" value="1Z123456789012345678" />
<input type="hidden" name="InquiryNumber2" value="1Z123456789012345678" />
<input type="submit" value="Track This Shipment" />
<br /><span style="font-size:8pt">This will open a new window</span>
<input type="hidden" name="UPS_HTML_License" value="1234567890" />
<input type="hidden" name="IATA" value="us" /><input type="hidden" name="Lang" value="eng" />
<input type="hidden" name="UPS_HTML_Version" value="3.0" /><input type="hidden" name="TypeOfInquiryNumber" value="T" />
</form>

Your WinForm seems like it could accomplish the same feat but since I use Master Pages the ASP.NET form element is in the master page and thus your element would be nested. Would this still work?