HTML Controls vs ASP.NET Controls in ASP.NET using VB.NET
In this article we will discuss, how HTML controls and ASP.Net controls works.
ntroduction
The main difference between HTML controls and ASP.Net controls is HTML controls never uses runtat="server" attribute to the tag. We declare HTML controls in a different way than we declare standard ASP.NET controls. The ASP.NET Framework enables us to take any HTML tag (real or imaginary) and add a runat="server" attribute to the tag. The runat="server" attribute converts the HTML tag into a server-side ASP.NET control. For example, the code given below contains a <span> tag, which has been converted into an ASP.NET control.
<%@ Page Language="VB" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<script runat="server">
Sub Page_Load()
timenow.InnerText = DateTime.Now.ToString("T")
End Sub
</script>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head id="Head1" runat="server">
<title>HTML Controls vs ASP.Net Controls</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
System Time :
<span id="timenow" runat="server" />
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
Notice that the <span> tag given above looks just like a normal HTML <span> tag except for the addition of the runat="server" attribute. Because the <span> tag is a server-side HTML control, we can program against it. In above code, the current date and time are assigned to the <span> tag in the Page_Load() method. The HTML controls are included in the ASP.NET Framework to make it easier to convert existing HTML pages to use the ASP.NET Framework.