Essential ASP.NET 2.0

1Architecture

UNLIKE ITS PREDECESSOR, ASP.NET 2.0 is not a fundamentally new way of building Web applications. Instead, ASP.NET 2.0 primarily adds new features on top of an existing architecture with the goal of simplifying many common tasks. This is not to say that this is a small release—quite the contrary. With more than double the number of classes and over 40 new controls, there is more than enough “newness” to keep even the most avid ASP.NET developer busy for quite some time exploring new features.

The core architecture, however, which consists of pages being parsed into class definitions and compiled into assemblies remains essentially unchanged, as does the HTTP pipeline used to process requests. In fact, it is possible to host most ...