Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Step By Step (Step By Step (Microsoft))

Chapter 4

Custom Rendered Controls

After completing this chapter, you will be able to

• Add a new project to the existing project within a Visual Studio solution file

• Create a server-side control that renders custom HTML

• Add a server-side control to the Visual Studio toolbox

• Place a server-side control on a Web form

• Manage events within the control

• Use ASP.NET to detect differences in client browsers and apply that information

In Chapter 3, we saw the fundamental architecture behind the ASP.NET rendering model. System.Web.UI.Page manages a list of server-side controls, and it's the job of each server-side control to render a particular portion of the page. ASP.NET broadly classifies server-side controls into two categories:

• Rendering controls (controls that completely manage the rendering process)

• Composite controls (multiple server-side controls bundled into a single unit)

This chapter focuses on the first type: custom rendered controls. We'll see how the control works once it's part of a Web page. Along the way we'll cover topics such as how controls manage events and how they detect the differences in client browsers.

Let's start by looking at the heart of the ASP.NET server-side control architecture—the System.Web.UI.Control class.