Summary

In this chapter, we looked at the user control model for authoring server controls. We showed you how to author a user control and looked at how an .ascx text file is dynamically parsed and compiled into an assembly. We also examined how user controls can be cached to improve performance.

In Chapter 5, we will introduce you to the custom control model, and in Chapter 6, we'll provide guidelines to help you choose between the two ASP.NET models for creating your own controls.

User controls are equivalent to composite controls, which we'll describe in Chapter 12. Nearly all control-authoring concepts that we will describe in later chapters apply to user controls too. Other than in Chapter 6, we will not discuss user controls again in this book unless there are special considerations that apply to them.