Chapter 3. Controls

Terms you'll need to understand:

• CSS (cascading style sheets)

• HTML controls

• HTML server controls

• Input validation

• Web server controls

Techniques you'll need to master:

• Adding controls to ASP.NET pages

• Customizing control appearance and behavior by setting properties

• Dynamically loading controls at runtime

• Using cascading style sheets to customize the look of a Web site

• Validating user input

Controls are the building blocks of a graphical user interface (GUI). Visual Studio .NET allows you to work with the following types of controls on Web Forms:

• HTML Controls— Traditional HTML elements displayed as controls.

• HTML Server Controls— HTML elements that can be programmed on the server, marked with the runat="server" attribute.

• Web Server Controls— These new controls are specifically designed to integrate well with the ASP.NET programming model. They support data binding and other advanced capabilities and might render as multiple HTML controls.

• Validation Controls— Validation Controls are Web server controls that contain logic to validate input in other server controls.

• Web User Controls and Web Custom Controls— These are two types of controls that you can create yourself. You can learn more about these controls in Chapter 8, “Creating and Managing Components and .NET Assemblies.”