ASP.NET is a web development platform, which provides a programming model, a comprehensive software infrastructure and various services required to build up robust web applications for PC, as well as mobile devices.
ASP.NET works on top of the HTTP protocol, and uses the HTTP commands and policies to set a browser-to-server bilateral communication and cooperation.
ASP.NET is a part of Microsoft .Net platform. ASP.NET applications are compiled codes, written using the extensible and reusable components or objects present in .Net framework. These codes can use the entire hierarchy of classes in .Net framework.
The Three Flavors of ASP.NET:
1.Web Forms
2.MVC
3.Web Pages
ASP.NET Web Forms (.aspx pages):
The Web Forms framework targets developers who prefer declarative and control-based programming, such as Microsoft Windows Forms (WinForms) and WPF/XAML/Silverlight. It offers a WYSIWYG designer-driven (drag-and-drop) development model, so it's popular with developers looking for a rapid application development (RAD) environment for web development. If you’re new to web programming and are familiar with the traditional Microsoft RAD client development tools (for example, for
Visual Basic and Visual C#), you can quickly build a web application without having expertise in HTML and JavaScript.
ASP.NET MVC:
By dividing the application into the model (M), views (V), and controllers (C), ASP.NET MVC can make it easier to manage complexity in larger applications. With ASP.NET MVC, you can have multiple teams working on a web site because the code for the business logic is separate from the code and markup for the presentation layer — developers can work on the business logic while designers work on the markup and JavaScript that is sent to the browser.
ASP.NET Web Pages (.cshtml and .vbhtml files):
ASP.NET Web Pages targets developers who want a simple web development story, along the lines of PHP. In the Web Pages model, you create HTML pages and then add server-based code to the page in order to dynamically control how that markup is rendered.