17.1 Comments/Troubleshooting
The Response object provides control over both the format of the
output sent to the browser and the content. In fact, an ASP.NET page
can be written with no static HTML content whatsoever, and can
generate that content exclusively through calls to the properties and
methods of the response object, if desired. This provides the ability
to programmatically generate not just HTML output dynamically, but
any output the browser is capable of displaying, including image
content and XML. This generation allows ASP.NET to be incredibly
flexible in its response to user actions.In classic ASP, the Response object's Write method
was often used for quick and dirty debugging, such as to display a
message indicating that a certain point in a page was reached or to
display the value of variables used within the page. This simple and
effective debugging technique had one major flaw: frequently, these
calls to Response.Write were left in a page that was moved from a
development server to a production server, resulting in end users
seeing the debugging messagehardly a desirable outcome. In
ASP.NET, the new Trace object (a property of the
Page class) provides the ability to write messages
to a central trace log rather than to the page itself (although trace
output can optionally be directed to the page). This feature allows
developers to use the same simple debugging techniques while
significantly reducing the likelihood of end users inadvertently
seeing debug messages. Tracing in ASP.NET is discussed in Chapter 10.In this chapter, we'll use the following code
listing as the basis for most examples in the chapter. Unless
otherwise noted, each example will consist of only the Page_Load
event handler for that particular example. Any output messages or
return values displayed will be shown as the Text property of the
ASP.NET Label control named Message or displayed by calling
Response.Write:
<%@ Page Language="vb" %>
<html>
<head>
<script runat="server">
Sub Page_Load( )
'Example code will go here
End Sub
</script>
</head>
<body>
<asp:label id="Message" runat="server"/>
</body>
</html>
