master pages/user controls

• master pages
  • Standardizing web page layout
  • Master page basics
    • ability to define a portion of a page separately and reuse it on mulitple pages
    • create locked-in layout that defines editable regions
    • customization on each page
    • ability to bind a page to a page template declaratively (no code) OR bind to a page dynamically at runtime
  • one master page, many content pages


• user controls (.ascx)
  • similar to 'include', but more powerful
  • used to be called pagelets
  • think: a bit of a content page that can be reused in other content pages
  • differences from web form
    • ascx instead of aspx
    • no html, body, or form tags
    • Control directive rather than Page directive