ASP.NET 2.0 Illustrated

10. Web Site Navigation Techniques

Two common approaches for linking Web pages together were part of the original specifications for HTML. You can use a hyperlink, implemented as a <a> element, or a <form> section that posts its contents to another page. It became common in recent years, with the rise in interactive scripting techniques, to use a <form> section to post the values back to the same page—rather than a separate one that handles the posted values. This became known as the postback approach, which was discussed in previous chapters when you looked at the design of Web Forms in ASP.NET and the use of server controls.

As you saw, ASP.NET not only supports a postback architecture; it actually requires it for many of the features, such ...