To dynamically generate Web pages,the ASP.NET Web Forms page framework is a scalable common language runtime programming model that can be used on the server.

In the previous model,Intended as a logical evolution of ASP (ASP.NET provides syntax compatibility with existing pages), the ASP.NET Web Forms framework has been specifically designed to address a number of key deficiencies. In particular, it provides:

• The ability to use reusable and create UI controls that can encapsulate common functionality and thus reduce the amount of code that a page developer has to write.

• The ability for the developers to cleanly structure their page logic in an orderly fashion (not "spaghetti code").

• The ability for development tools to provide strong WYSIWYG design support for pages.

ASP.NET Web Forms pages are text files with an .aspx file name extension. They can be deployed throughout an IIS virtual root directory tree. When a browser client requests .aspx resources, the ASP.NET runtime parses and compiles the target file into a .NET Framework class. This class can then be used to dynamically process incoming requests. (Note that the .aspx file is compiled only the first time it is accessed; the compiled type instance is then reused across multiple requests).

We can convert an HTML page into an ASP.NET page is to copy the HTML file to a new file with an extension of .aspx.

This following code displays our example as an ASP.NET page:

ASP.NET page is same as an HTML page.

As we know that an HTML page has the extension of .htm. The server sends the page to the browser without any modifications,if a browser requests an HTML page from the server.

An ASP.NET page has the extension .aspx and if a browser requests an ASP.NET page, the server processes any executable code in the page, before the result is sent back to the browser.

The ASP.NET page do not contain any executable code, so nothing is executed. In the next examples we will add some executable code to the page to demonstrate the difference between dynamic ASP pages and static HTML pages.

Active Server Pages (ASP) has been around for several years and with ASP, executable code can be placed inside HTML pages.

Classic ASP is the previous versions of ASP (before ASP .NET).

ASP .NET is not fully compatible with Classic ASP, but most Classic ASP pages will work fine as ASP .NET pages if you will make only minor changes.

If you are interested to learn more about Classic ASP, please visit our ASP Tutorial.

We have added some executable code to the previous example to demonstrate how ASP can display pages with dynamic content:

The code whic is present inside the <% --%> tags is executed on the server.

Response.Write is ASP code is used for writing something to the HTML output stream.

Now() is a function which returns the servers current date and time.

If you are interested to try it yourself, save the code in a file called "dynpage.asp"

This following code is used to displays our example as an ASP .NET page:

The previous examples didn't demonstrate any difference between the ASP .NET and Classic ASP.

As you can see from the two latest examples that there are no differences between the two ASP and ASP .NET pages.

In the next chapters you will see how server controls make ASP. NET more powerful than the Classic ASP.