ASP.NET.in.a.Nutshell.Second.Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 39. The System.Web.UI.HtmlControls Namespace

The System.Web.UI.HtmlControls
namespace includes classes for
HTML server controls. HTML
server controls are ASP.NET controls that raise events on the server
and provide a simple object model that allows you to set some basic
properties. Unlike web controls, which are found in the
System.Web.UI.WebControls namespace, each HTML
server control corresponds directly to an HTML element like
<textarea> or
<input>. Web controls are generally
preferred in ASP.NET development because they are abstracted away
from the low-level HTML details and they provide a richer object
model with many more events, sophisticated data binding, automatic
state management, and validation controls. HTML server controls are
most often used when upgrading existing ASP pages. A standard HTML
element can be converted into an HTML server control by adding the
attribute runat="server" in the tag. This makes it
extremely simple to convert a static HTML page into a dynamic page
that allows controls to be manipulated as objects during postbacks.

All controls in this namespace derive from
HtmlControl. This class provides basic
functionality, including a name/value collection of attributes and
CSS style properties. In addition, controls that require both an
opening and closing tag inherit from
HtmlContainerControl. This class adds a
HtmlContainerControl.InnerText and
HtmlContainerControl.InnerHtml property which
allow you to access the text contained inside the tag. HTML elements
that don't have corresponding classes can be
represented by the HtmlGenericControl class. Note
that only button and hyperlink controls trigger server postbacks.
Many controls provide a ServerChanged event, which
won't fire after a control is modified until a
postback occurs.

To understand all the available attributes and CSS properties, you
may want to refer to an HTML reference. There are many excellent HTML
references on the web, or you can refer to
O'Reilly's

HTML &
XHTML: The Definitive Guide by Chuck Musciano and Bill
Kennedy.

Figure 39-1 shows the types in this namespace.

Figure 39-1. The System.Web.UI.HtmlControls namespace