Professional SharePoint® 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007

2.4. WSS 3.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 Development

Because Microsoft changed the architecture approach of SharePoint by building on top of ASP.NET 2.0, SharePoint development is very much like ASP.NET 2.0 development. Nearly everything available within ASP.NET 2.0 is available within a SharePoint environment. Aside from the similarities, SharePoint also adds some additional development opportunities above and beyond what is at the disposal of a standard ASP.NET 2.0 site. However, SharePoint is a separate product from ASP.NET 2.0, so there are some differences.

2.4.1. Like ASP.NET 2.0

This chapter previously explained how SharePoint — specifically, WSS 3.0 — is now built on top of ASP.NET 2.0 and is implemented using a custom HTTP application, handlers, and modules. This new approach enables all native ASP.NET 2.0 concepts to bleed through for use within SharePoint. The following few sections touch on some of the similarities between standard ASP.NET 2.0 development and SharePoint-specific development.

2.4.1.1. Master Pages

SharePoint heavily leverages ASP.NET 2.0 master pages. All SharePoint sites are based on the same initial master page called default.master found in the [..]\12\TEMPLATE\GLOBAL directory. This master page contains many content placeholders required in most master pages leveraged within SharePoint. It also contains an instance of a special SharePoint implementation of the ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part Manager control, which acts as the hub for the Web Part framework on all customizable ...