Professional C# 4 and .NET 4

Chapter 41. ASP.NET Features

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• User and custom controls

• Master pages

• Site navigation

• Security

• Themes

• Web Parts

• ASP.NET AJAX

In this chapter you look at some of the techniques that ASP.NET supplies to enhance your web sites and applications. These techniques make it easier for you to create web sites and applications, make it possible for you to add advanced functionality, and improve the user experience.

Sometimes the built-in web controls, however powerful, don't quite match up with your requirements for a specific project. In the first part of this chapter, you examine the options available to control developers and assemble some simple user controls of your own. You also look at the basics of more advanced control construction.

Next, you look at master pages, a technique that enables you to provide templates for your web sites. Using master pages you can implement complex layouts on web pages throughout a web site with a great deal of code reuse. You also see how you can use the navigation web server controls in combination with a master page to provide consistent navigation across a web site.

Site navigation can be made user-specific, such that only certain users (those that are registered with the site, or site administrators, say) can access certain sections. You also look at site security and how to log in to web sites — something that is made extremely easy via the login web server controls.

After that, you look at some more advanced techniques, namely, providing ...