ASP.Net HTML Server Control

Steps to Add Server Control in Web Page

Before describing about the Web Server Control here you should know the procedure to use in a practical way. It will make easy for you to use it by reading out these steps.

The procedure to use any server control in Web Page is given below:

Step 1. Open Visual Studio 2005, click on “File? Menu and select “Web Site…? in the “New? sub items then you will get “New Web Site? dialog box. Step 2. In “New Web Site? dialog box, select language and press “OK? then a default.aspx web page will be opened which is available in source view mode. Step 3. Select “Designer? from View Menu (press Shift+F7) to see the default.aspx web page in design view. Step 4. Select the “HTML? item in the toolbox tab (press Cltr+Alt+X if not visible) from left hand side in Visual Studio. Step 5. Select the control in the toolbox (or make visible by selecting tool box item if not visible). Step 6. Keeping mouse button pressed, dragged it to the web form. Step 7. You can set properties of the control from the Properties Window. Alternatively, press the space key in between control’s tag and set the required attribute or property from the appeared list. Remember that you can set control’s attributes or properties using its tag, when the web page is in source mode.

Html Server Controls vs. Web Server Controls

HTML elements are structural parts of a Web Form, defined by HTML tags and tag attributes. By default, traditional HTML elements within an ASP.NET web form are treated as literal text and are programmatically inaccessible to page developers - such elements are client-side operated. To make HTML elements programmatically accessible, you can indicate that an HTML element should be parsed and treated as a server control by adding a runat="server" attribute. HTML controls exist merely to provide an easy conversion from old ASP pages to ASP.NET, they do not provide a useful object model and aren't simple to program against.

Web Server controls provide a consistent, object-oriented programming model, with common properties and events that can be handled on the server. Web server controls include traditional (desktop) form controls such as buttons and edit boxes as well as complex controls such as lists, grids and calendars. What's more Web Server controls provide much richer sets of properties, methods and events.