What's the difference between Themes and Master Pages?

[johannblake]

I'm reading up on Themes and Master Pages in ASP.NET 2.0 but I cannot
seem to understand what the difference between the two are.

Do Master Pages essentially end up doing what Themes do? Is Themes an
older part of the .NET architecutre and simply included for backward
compatibility or are Themes and Master Pages two different things meant
to compliment each other?

Can someone give me some insight please.

Thank you
Johann Blake

 

[Richard Brown]

Check out:

http://builder.com.com/5100-6371-6060080.html

http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/design/documentation/

they seem to confirm our conversation earlier that the masterpage is
intended primarily to control site layout and menus etc (i.e. your
template)

And Themes are there to fine tune the look and feel.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=F6ran_Andersson?=]

Both were introduced in ASP.net 2.0, so they are meant to complement
each other.

Master pages is used to separate the page skeleton from the contents of
the pages, and Themes are used to define style for elements in the page.

Master Pages and Themes can sometimes be used do the same thing, like
setting a common css file for all pages. Where it's done best depends a
bit on the desired result.

 

[Erik Funkenbusch]

I'm reading up on Themes and Master Pages in ASP.NET 2.0 but I cannot
seem to understand what the difference between the two are.

Master pages define an "outer" page around your content page. It's like
embedding a control in a form.

Themes apply to the entire page, and change style on everything.

While you can certainly embed theming information in a master page, that's
not really the way it's designed to work.