Custom controls and Web Parts can make you more productive by enabling you to create re-usable components for your WebForms. You can package up a piece of your user interface and re-use it within your Web site or across many Web sites. But that’s only one way that these controls make you more productive. If you’ve ever had an ASP.NET control that you wished worked slightly differently, you can now create the control that you want. When you build your own custom controls and Web Parts, you can have the control do as much (or as little) as you want.
If you’ve worked with ASP.NET you’re familiar with ASP.NET server controls. You may even have tried building user controls or your own custom controls and have seen what ASP.NET controls look like from the inside. However, Web Parts are new with ASP.NET 2.0, and provide functionality that is very different from what you’ve seen with ASP.NET controls. Web Parts enable you to give your users the ability to customize your application to meet their needs. By using Web Parts, you can involve your users in creating their own user interfaces — yet another way of making you more productive.
This book’s focus is on how to use Visual Studio 2005 most effectively to create your controls (although the information you need to create custom controls, user controls, and Web Parts using any text editor is also included). Visual Studio 2005 provides you with the best support for creating ASP.NET applications and creating your own controls.
The approach in this book is simple: “If you want this, code this; if you code this, you’ll get this.” Throughout the book, the emphasis is on the code that you need to create controls that you can use when building Web applications. There’s no code in here, for instance, on how to calculate the square root of every number less than 2,000. The code in this book is based on business-related applications. This also means that this book does not provide much background on how ASP.NET works, unless it makes a difference to you when you’re writing code. If you’re familiar with how ASP.NET works “under the hood,” that knowledge will deepen your understanding of the material in this book. On the other hand, if you’ve been able to create applications without knowing that material — well, you won’t need to know it to understand the examples in this book, either.
Where there is more than one way to accomplish a goal, I describe the costs and benefits of each method and identify the typical scenarios in which you would use each technique so that you can make an informed decision about what you want to do.
There’s probably material in this book that you won’t need, at least not initially. But when you do need that information, it’s in here with lots of examples (in Visual Basic 2005 and C#) to show you how to do it. For instance, when you first build a custom control you may not intend to distribute that control outside of your company. As a result, you won’t need to read the section on licensing. If, later on, you need that material, it’s here (in Chapter 7, to be exact).
I was waiting for a good manual about custom controls. Thanks.
it's a great book to my e-library.
thanks