Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB

Chapter 4. Working with ASP.NET Controls

ASP.NET Server Controls are the workhorses of ASP.NET. Almost all the pages you build in VWD will contain one or more server controls. These controls come in all sorts and sizes, ranging from simple controls like a Button and a Label to complex controls that are capable of displaying data from a database like the TreeView and the GridView, which you'll see in Chapters 7 and 12.

The architecture of ASP.NET Server Controls is deeply integrated into ASP.NET, giving the controls a feature set that is quite unique in today's technologies for building web sites.

This chapter shows you what server controls are, how they work, and which ones are available out of the box when you install Visual Web Developer.

In particular, this chapter teaches you the following topics:

• What ASP.NET Server Controls are

• The different kind of server controls you have at your disposal

• The common behavior shared among most of the server controls

• How the ASP.NET runtime processes the server controls on your page

• How server controls are able to maintain their state across postbacks

The chapter starts off with a general discussion of server controls. You'll see how to define them in your code by dragging them from the Toolbox into Design or Markup View.

The section that follows gives you a thorough look at the many controls that are available in the VWD Toolbox.