ASP.Net Question of the week (Friday, November 21, 2008)

Question.

I swear I've looked all through the tool box in Visual Web Developer Express and there is no control named Web Server control.

Answer:

It can be confusing. There are HTML controls and there are also Web Server Controls.

HTML controls, if you are familiar with HTML, are controls that work with the HTML object model--such as radio buttons, buttons, forms, etc. You can code these directly into an HTML page.

ASP.Net permits you to use these controls in an ASP.Net page--which makes sense.

In addition, ASP.Net also provides additional controls beyond the HTML like controls. This also makes sense since, as a developer, you are looking for greater functionality than mere HTML controls--after all, that's why you're learning ASP.Net. These additional controls can be bunched into a category called Web Server Controls.

This page from MSDN does a decent job of describing the categories...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zsyt68f1.aspx


In the old days, this would have been printed and included in the Product documentation.