Note: ASP and ASP.NET despite having the same name (or partially same name) are radically different from each other. You can learn the differences between ASP and ASP.NET via internet. They won’t be covered in this tutorial.
Before server side programming, web developers widely used client side programming to enhance their websites (Client side programming is also used widely today). In client side programming, the developer included embedded applets (a very small application that performs a specific task) that were downloaded on the client’s computer and were executed on client’s pc rather than the server.
One of the major problems in this methodology that it wasn’t supported equally by all browsers or operating systems. So, the developers had to test their web applications in different browsers and operating systems and even had to provide browser updates. Server side programming was a better alternative.
Server Side Programming:
In server side programming, as used in ASP.NET, all the web application code is executed on the server and the client’s browser just receives the HTML document.
This figure explains how server side programming works (Click on it to enlarge):
So, that’s all for Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET. In the next chapter, we will create a simple web application using ASP.NET 3.5. Make sure you read the section basic skills and requirements before proceeding to Chapter 2: Creating A Simple ASP.NET Page.