ASP.NET Web Forms - About Web Forms in .NET Framework

About Web Forms in .NET Framework

Web pages in ASP.Net are called ASP.NET Web Forms which have certain server controls such as text, dropdown list, checkboxes, and buttons. An ASP.NET Web Form looks similar to the web forms in HTML.

The only difference is that in ASP.NET, the Web Forms runs at the server side and in HTML the web forms runs at the client side. Apart from this difference an ASP.NET Web Form has more features than an ordinary HTML web form such as:

• The code blocks are processed on the server.
• The entire page in ASP.NET is compiled when it is requested for the first time. When you make subsequent requests, the page is not compiled but shown directly in your browser.
• ASP.NET Web Forms can contain page directives. Page directives allow you to set the default language and user controls tags for the entire page. You can also turn off session state and ViewState management using page directives.
• An ASP.NET Web Form can contain both user controls and Server side Includes (SSIs).
• An ASP.NET Web Form though run on the server can contain client side script such as JavaScript or Jscript.

An ASP.NET Web Form first gets compiled into Intermediate Language (IL) and later to the machine language. Not just the server side code gets compiled but every control and element in the page gets compiled. This enables the ASP.NET Web Form to be in any language that is compatible with Common Language Runtime (CLR) engine. Another advantage with the code getting translated to IL is that the user can use the application in any browser. In addition, you can reduce the processors and server’s load when you compile the ASP.NET Web Forms in ASP.NET, thereby, increasing the user’s productivity time. Thus ASP.NET allows you to create Web Forms that are platform independent, language independent, and browser independent.