Microsoft Knowledge Base Wiki

For additional ASP.NET overviews, refer to the following
Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

• Automatic state management.
• Simple access to object values without having to use the Request object.
• Ability to react to events in server-side code to create
  applications that are better structured.
• Common approach to building user interfaces for Web
  pages.
• Output is automatically customized based on the
  capabilities of the browser.

In addition to the built-in controls, the ASP.NET page
framework also provides the ability to create user controls and custom
controls. User controls and custom controls can enhance and extend existing
controls to build a much richer user interface.

HTML Server Controls

The HTML server controls are Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
elements that include a runat=server attribute. The HTML server controls have the same HTML output and
the same properties as their corresponding HTML tags. In addition, HTML server
controls provide automatic state management and server-side events. HTML server
controls offer the following advantages:

• The HTML server controls map one to one with their
  corresponding HTML tags.
• When the ASP.NET application is compiled, the HTML server
  controls with the runat=server attribute are compiled into the assembly.
• Most controls include an OnServerEvent for the most commonly used event for the control. For example,
  the
  control has an OnServerClick event.
• The HTML tags that are not implemented as specific HTML
  server controls can still be used on the server side; however, they are added
  to the assembly as HtmlGenericControl.
• When the ASP.NET page is reposted, the HTML server controls
  keep their values.

The System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlControl base class contains all of the common properties. HTML server
controls derive from this class.

To use an HTML server control, use
the following syntax (which uses the HtmlInputText control as an example):

For more information about individual HTML server controls that are
available in ASP.NET, refer to the following Microsoft Web sites:

Web Server Controls

Web controls are very similar to the HTML server controls such as
Button, TextBox, and Hyperlink, except that Web controls have a standardized set of property
names. Web server controls offer the following advantages:

• Make it easier for manufacturers and developers to build
  tools or applications that automatically generate the user
  interface.
• Simplify the process of creating interactive Web forms,
  which requires less knowledge of how HTML controls work and make the task of
  using them less prone to errors.

The System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebControl base class contains all of the common properties. Most of the Web
server controls derive from this class.

To use a Web server control,
use the following syntax (which uses the TextBox control as an example):

Web server controls can be divided into four categories:

Basic Web Controls

Basic Web controls provide the same functionality as their HTML
server control counterparts. However, basic Web control include additional
methods, events, and properties against which you can program.

For more information about individual Web controls that are available in
ASP.NET, refer to the following Microsoft Web sites:

Validation Controls

Validation controls are used to validate the values that are
entered into other controls of the page. Validation controls perform
client-side validation, server-side validation, or both, depending on the
capabilities of the browser in which the page is displayed. Validation controls
offer the following advantages:

• You can associate one or more validation controls with each
  control that you want to validate.
• The validation is performed when the page form is
  submitted.
• You can specify programmatically whether validation should
  occur, which is useful if you want to provide a cancel button so that the user
  can exit without having to fill valid data in all of the fields.
• The validation controls automatically detect whether
  validation should be performed on the client side or the server
  side.

  Note A client-side validation catches errors before a postback operation is complete. Therefore, if you have combinations of client-side and server-side validation controls on a single page, the server-side validation will be preempted if a client-side validation fails.

For more information about individual validation controls that
are available in ASP.NET, refer to the following Microsoft Web sites:

List Controls

List controls are special Web server controls that support
binding to collections. You can use list controls to display rows of data in a
customized, templated format. All list controls expose DataSource and DataMember properties, which are used to bind to collections.

List
controls can bind only to collections that support the IEnumerable, ICollection, or IListSource interfaces. For example, a Microsoft Visual C# .NET sample page
appears as follows:

<%@ Page Language="C#" %>




	<%# Container.DataItem %>



				

A Microsoft Visual Basic .NET sample page appears as follows:

<%@ Page Language="vb" %>



	
   		<%# Container.DataItem %>
	


				

The output appears as follows:

one

two

three

For more information about individual list controls that are
available in ASP.NET, refer to the following Microsoft Web sites:

Rich Controls

In addition to the preceding controls, the ASP.NET page framework
provides a few, task-specific controls called rich controls. Rich controls are
built with multiple HTML elements and contain rich functionality. Examples of
rich controls are the Calendar control and the AdRotator control.

For more information about individual rich
controls that are available in ASP.NET, refer to the following Microsoft Web
sites:

User Controls

Often, you may want to reuse the user interface of your Web Form
without having to write any extra code. ASP.NET enables you to do this by
converting your Web Forms into user controls. User controls, which have the
.ascx file extension, can be used multiple times within a single Web
Form.

To convert a Web Form into a user control, follow these steps:

1. Remove all ,, and
   tags.
2. If the @ Page directive appears in the page, change it to @ Control.
3. Include a className attribute in the @ Control directive so that the user control is typed strongly when you
   instantiate it.
4. Give the control a descriptive file name, and change the
   file extension from .aspx to .ascx.

For more information about user controls, refer to the
following topic in the Microsoft .NET Framework Software Development Kit (SDK)
documentation:

Custom Controls

In addition to the built-in Web controls, ASP.NET also allows you
to create your own custom controls. It may be useful to develop custom controls
if you are faced with one of these scenarios:

• You need to combine the functionality of two or more
  built-in Web controls.
• You need to extend the functionality of a built-in
  control.
• You need a control that is completely different than any of
  the controls that currently exist.

For more information about developing custom controls, refer to
the following topics in the .NET Framework SDK documentation: