about user controls, web parts and visual web parts

Question

I'm new to VS and ASP.NET programming world.

I wonder what are user controls, web parts, and visual web parts.

for example, <asp:button> is what?

what's the difference among them.

Thank you.

Answer 1

User Controls

WebParts

Visual Web Parts

ASP:Button is a Control.  All UserControls, WebParts, and Visual Webparts are Controls.  It's not really relevant to you what type of Control Button is underneath.

Answer 2

<asp:button> -  is a server control, which is a managed code assembly (DLL) that generates HTML for display on a web page.

Web parts - are essential specialized server controls.  They also have a dll that generates HTML but also have some other pieces that make it possible to add or remove them from a web page at runtime.

User controls are .ascx files that contain a snippet of HTML code (possibly including server controls like <asp:button>s).  They can also have a dll that contains code to manipulate the HTML that will be generated for display on a web page.  Many people find them easier to work with than server controls or web parts because they have a drag and drop visual editor to position the controls that make up the web part.

Visual Web parts are a new project type in Visual Studio 2010 that provides a traditional web part as a wrapper for a user control.  It provides the advantage of a visual editor to develop the interface, but the finished product is a web part that can be added or removed from the web page at runtime in SharePoint.

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Paul Stork SharePoint Server
MVP Chief SharePoint Architect: Sharesquared
Blog: http://dontpapanic.com/blog
Twitter: Follow @pstork
Please remember to mark your question as "answered" if this solves your problem.

Answer 3

Thank you, Paul Stork.

I'm not familiar with the mechanism of managed code.

How user controls translated html etc.

do you have any articles?

Again thank you.