Web development has been around for quite some time now.
With almost everything getting the "online" prefix, it's very apparent that the importance of web development has grown many - fold.
With Active Server Pages (ASP) being a popular choice amongst the programmers, due to the flexibility it provides in the usage of scripting languages, building web pages with ASP technology has increased considerably.
What's next? - Microsoft released ASP.
NET that provided the programmers the choice of using a whole range of full - fledged programming languages (rather than scripting languages) on a common platform.
ASP.
NETis based on object oriented programming concepts.
To be able to understand and build websites using this technology, you would require to be well versed with HTML as well.
The basic difference between the traditional web programming languages and ASP.
NET is in the fact that it is a server side technology.
This means that the programming code is interpreted by the web server, not the client.
The server does all the background work and sends the output to the browser.
As mentioned earlier, programmers have a choice of programming language, and ASP.
NET which is based on the.
NET framework (which supports more than twenty programming languages) complies and processes them to send the final output to the web browser.
To list a few advantages,

• You can easily build dynamic pages using ASP.
  NET.
  
• You have a choice of programming language - A real boon to web developers.
  The flexibility provided by.
  Net Framework, comes in handy and you can choose the language that you are most comfortable writing in.
  
• The development code is processed on the server.
  This separates the programmer's code from the HTML used by the designers and developers can make modifications independently, without interfering in the designs.
  
• The.
  NET framework has support for various technologies and ASP.
  NET is built to take full advantage of this platform.
  

Right - we saw what a powerful tool we have at hand.
And building websites using this technology gives you an edge over any other technology used.
The downside? - Yes - you need to use a Microsoft server.
Cross - OS platform is not an ASP.
NET feature.
Plus you need to be very clear on object oriented programming concepts.
With the ever growing field of web development, ASP.
NET is a very apt technology for building websites and web applications on a Microsoft platform.