High Performing ASP.Net Application Development - Best Practices

As a server-side web application development framework, ASP.Net is used widely for creating dynamic and high performing websites, internet applications and web services. Microsoft has further designed the framework to allow programmers to write code in several .NET supported languages including C# and VB.Net. You can always use ASP.Net to reap a number of benefits including less coding, rapid development, enhanced security and easy maintenance. At the same time, you can also use a set of rich server and client-side controls to accomplish a variety of tasks without writing longer lines of code, while enjoying complete control over the application. However, it is also important to understand and use some best practices for high performing ASP.Net application development.

5 ASP.Net Best Practices for Developing High-Performing Web Applications

1) Use HTML and CSS instead of Control Adapters

Since the release of .Net 2.0, developers use control adapter to render customized code according to individual devices and environments. But you have option to render customized code by using HTML and CSS. You can render customized code by using CSS media queries and standards-compliant HTML to improve the application’s performance. It is also recommended to use HTML and CSS instead of control adapters. Many developers even prefer converting the existing control adapters into HTML and CSS to improve the application’s performance.

2) Use CSS Stylesheets instead of Controls’ Style Properties

ASP.Net web server controls allow programmers to change their look and feel by using in-line style properties. However, they also have option to set the formatting value of these web controls through CSS stylesheets. For instance, instead of using the forecolor property of a web control, you can use CSS stylesheets to set the color of the control. The use of CSS stylesheets will help you in avoiding setting values for individual web controls. Also, you can use centralize style values to easily change the look and feel of these web controls.

3) Avoid Using Page and Control Callback Methods

Often programmers are required to update specific part of a web page without refreshing the page completely. It is a common practice among ASP.Net developers to accomplish partial page update through Page and Control callback methods. But programmers do not realized that use of these Page and Control callback methods affect the application’s performance by creating issues related to routing and friendly URLs. You can always improve the performance of your ASP.Net application by disabling the callback methods. The partial page updates can be performed more efficiently by using AJAX, MVC, SignalR, Web API or UpdatePanel.

4) Use Dynamic Browser Capability Detection Feature

The popularity of a website or internet application, nowadays, depends on its compatibility with various devices and web browsers. While using earlier versions of ASP.Net, programmers were required to detect supported features for each browser by storing these supported features in XML files. But the static method of detecting the supported features for individual browser can have a huge impact on the performance and popularity of the application. So you must detect the supported features for each browser dynamically by using specially designed frameworks like Modernizr. The framework will use a specific property or method against the browser to detect if the browser produces the desire results.

5) Enable Auto Generated Client Side Validations

Most web programmers rely on the request validation feature of ASP.Net to prevent perceived threat by identifying and stopping bad requests. But you must remember that the request validation feature is not effective in fully combating cross site scripting attacks. To eliminate the threat of cross site scripting attacks, it is important to validate all user input, and encode the output. ASP.NET MVC 2 further allows developers to keep the client-side and server-side validations separate. You can simply enable the client side validations to protect the website from cross site scripting attacks by adding client side validation.

On the whole, you have to learn several ASP.Net best practices to rapidly develop high performing websites and web applications. Also, you must avail latest version of ASP.Net to avail several new features and capabilities. These features will help you in improving the performance of the ASP.Net applications without putting any extra time and effort. You can get in touch with a custom .net development company who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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