ASP.NET basic best practices

As you can see around you, thin or rich clients are more and more used to develop complex applications such as ERP softwares for example. This kind of user interface is not reserved to promotional or shopping websites anymore.

A couple of years ago, it wasn't very interesting to use thin clients in a complex software because we wasn't able to have enough client-side interactions. For users, this type of UI was too slow and their experience when they used the software wasn't pleasant. Moreover is was very complicated to take into consideration every browsers particularities.

Today, with Ajax, those problems begin to disappear and according to me when you write a new and large application with complex UI interactions, rich client may be a suitable solution that we have to take into account.

That's why, even if I don't plan to become a webmaster, I have been looking at ASP.NET very seriously for several months. I have found a lot of interesting things, I can't do the whole list in my blog, but these are the most important :

• integrated XML markups are more and more used (for example <asp:button>) and it's better to use them when it's possible instead of using an HTML equivalent
  
• CSS must be used as much as possible, it can really improve the quality of your web site
  
• DIV and SPAN markups can be used without moderation
  
• You have to use bindings as much as possible
  
• You have to avoid to generate HTML by code because a designer won't be able to improve your interface if you do that
  

I don't explain those predicates in more details because I don't pretend to have made an incredible discovery. But I would be happy to be more accurate if needed.

Nico