ASP.NET Web Pages 2

ASP.NET Web Pages with Razor syntax is a programming framework for creating web applications. It is included as part of Microsoft WebMatrix Extensibility, which is a free development environment. WebMatrix has a page editor, a database (SQL Server Compact), and a Web server for testing (IIS Express). It also includes other tools to help you create and manage sites. If you like, you can create web pages that use ASP.NET Razor syntax in Visual Studio, which provides additional features like a debugger.

ASP.NET Razor syntax uses a simple programming syntax that lets you embed server-based code into a web page. The page can also contain HTML markup, CSS information, and client script (JavaScript and jQuery). Razor syntax is based on ASP.NET, which is the part of the .NET Framework that's specifically designed for creating web applications. Razor syntax gives you all the power of ASP.NET, but it uses a simplified syntax that's easier to learn if you are a beginner. If you're an expert, it makes you more productive. Even though this syntax is easy to use, its relationship to ASP.NET means that as your web applications become more sophisticated, you have the power of the larger framework available to you.

When a page runs that has Razor code in it, the server runs that code before it sends the page to the browser. By running on the server, the code can perform tasks that can be more complex to do using client content alone, such as accessing server-based databases. Most importantly, server code can dynamically create client content. It can generate HTML markup or other content on the fly and then send it to the browser along with any static HTML in the page.

Documentation Resources for ASP.NET Web Pages

Most of the documentation for ASP.NET Web Pages with Razor syntax is published on the ASP.NET website (https://asp.net/web-pages). Additional information is available on other websites and in blogs.