3.1. AN OVERVIEW OF WEB SERVER CONTROLS

The Web server control is ASP.NET's most-used component. Although you may have seen a lot of potential uses of the HTML server controls shown in the previous chapter, Web server controls are definitely a notch higher in capability. They allow for a higher level of functionality that becomes more apparent as you work with them.

The HTML server controls provided by ASP.NET work in that they map to specific HTML elements. You control the output by working with the HTML attributes that the HTML element provides. The attributes can be changed dynamically on the server side before they are finally output to the client. There is a lot of power in this, and you have some HTML server control capabilities that you simply do not have when you work with Web server controls.