Programming Microsoft ASP.NET MVC

Chapter 2. ASP.NET MVC views

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

—Steve Jobs

In ASP.NET MVC, any request is resolved in terms of an action being executed on some controller. Even for a newcomer, this point is relatively easy to understand and figure out. But, there’s another aspect of the request that the newcomer often has difficulty grasping—the generation of the HTML for the browser.

In ASP.NET Web Forms, you don’t even think of an action—you think of a page, and a page incorporates both logic and view. In classic ASP.NET, you start with, say, a register.aspx page that the user reaches following a link. The page unfolds its user interface, which ends with a submit button. The button originates a POST to ...