One of the greatest improvements of ASP.NET over ASP is the postback architecture, allowing client-side events to be linked to server code. Not only does it provide a richer programming model, but it also leads to more structured (and therefore more maintainable) code. This architecture is used whenever a control posts back to a page, and there are times when this needs controlling to a fine degree.
In this chapter we are going to look at several topics revolving around ASP.NET pages and the page architecture, in particular:
How cross-page posting has been improved and simplified
How validation has been improved by way of groups, allowing only controls within selected groups to participate in validation
How to use the Wizard control to provide multistep pages
How to map pages to other pages with URL mapping
What improvements have been made to client-side scripting support
What new attributes for pages have been added
How new events fit within the existing life cycle of control and page creation