Complete newbie.... Therefore, I've got a few questions...

G

Guest

Hi

I'll be blunt: I'm a newbie to .Net, and a lot of the concepts can be
confusing to me at times


So basically, I'll start off with a little intro:

I'm fairly proficient with "classic" ASP VBS applications development, but
I'm attracted to .Net from all the hype about how "its better than PHP"
etc... along with improved speed and other performance enhancements, but I'm
integreiged most by these so-called "controls"

Myself, I am a W3C Web-Standards Evangelist, and after reviewing the output
code from these controls, I'm not exactly impressed (non-semantic markup,
tables for layout, IE is considered "better" than Gecko, excessive
javascript, breaking the user experience, etc...)

So basically...

How is using a Server/User Control better than writing some VB code to
define the XHTML 1.1 output (note that I didn't say HTML3.02) and then
putting that in an <!--#include--> ?

And moreover... how do I write custom controls? (I do own VisualStudio .Net
2003 Academic (ie: Professional with an extra CD)) Because I'm planning of
writiing a pretty complex web-application (a hybrid community/gallery site,
something along the same lines as DeviantArt.com, only with less pathetic
manga artists who rant on their LiveJournals and read Megatokyo all day long)
</digress>

Anyway, so I'm basically interested in:

a) Learning what .Net is "all about"
b) How to write custom controls (preferably in VB)
c) ...And use them effectivly in an application
d) And why using .Net in this case (see my digression above) would be
preferable over, say, PHP5 (not 4) or "classic" ASP3.0

Thanks :)

-A Newbie
 
K

Karl

Newbie
ASP.Net less than stellar support for standards is a little disheartening.
There are two good things though, ASP.Net 2.0 will be much better, and, as
you are discovering, the OO model used by ASP.Net makes extending or
creating your own controls very possible. You can see such an example of
extendability, for the sake of standards compatibility, at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/acsaraf1.asp

To answer your questions,


pre-1:
you seem to basically be asking what advantages do user/server controls have
over include? Basically they can be programmed against. This allows them
to be dynamically loaded, values to be changed and used from throughout the
rest of your code. This tends to create a far nicer OO model than the more
procedural nature of Include.


1 - What .net is all about?
From a programming stand point, I'd say ASP.Net brings with it the power of
the .Net framework (think having a Server.CreateObject() for all your worldy
needs with a much easier and powerful way of using it) along with object
oriented development. I think good OO is something most ASP.Net developers
still aren't doing, but we'll hopefully get there. While Microsoft might
sell ASP.Net from a performance standpoint, I'd say the primary advantage is
in reduced cost of maintenance. On the flip side, I'd say the learning
curve is too great for people without a programming background, and while
these people might learn ASP.net, it'll be very difficult for them to break
into the real benefits of it.

2 - Custom Controls
Custom controls are a good example of what I said above, they are a real
representation of the true power ASP.Net lets us have, but they are very
difficult to use. Anyone can write a simple hello world custom control, but
getting into things like templates, databinding and custom
postback/viewstate handling is really complicated. "Developing Microsoft
ASP.NEt server controls and components" by Nikhil Kothari is a must have
book for learning to build these...but I would consider this book/topic
advanced. Another benefit of ASP.Net is how strong the community work is,
there are hundreds of online tutorials on building these, and you'll be able
to find some that start at hte very basic all the way to some that are very
advanced.

3 -
see #2, but my comment would be if you get to that point that you can build
nice and robust custom controls, you'll know how to use them effectively.

4 - ASP.Net vs ASP/PHP
I answered what I think the real benefit of asp.net are....don't think ASP
or PHP comes close to those benefits (though they have their own strength)


Karl
 

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