Pro ASP.NET 4 in VB 2010, Third Edition

Chapter 27. Custom Server Controls

Each type of custom control has its own advantages and disadvantages. In Chapter 15, you learned about user controls. User controls are easier to create than custom server controls, but server controls are far more powerful. Server controls beat user controls in two key areas:

Server controls give you complete control over the HTML you generate:

In other words, you can create a control such as the ASP.NET Calendar, which provides a single object interface but renders itself as a complex combination of elements.

Server controls provide better design-time support:

You can add them to the Toolbox in Visual Studio and set properties and add event handlers at design time. You can even configure the description that Visual ...