I've never created a web page and I'm just learning ASP.NET now and all the examples I see are mostly with filling out forms etc. So I'm wondering if the lively, colorful, and snazzy web sites can be done with ASP.NET. I have also been playing with a trial of Expression Web. It seems to be for the "fancier" side of things. Are the two sides of the web mutually exclusive or can an ASP.NET page be just as colorful? Keep in mind I'm new to doing anything on the web.
Thanks for your help?
In my personal experience, I have had better luck with producing "lively" pages using ASP.NET MVC, since I have better control over the markup, and I don't have to contend with ViewState or munged control IDs. Subjectively, the pages feel less sluggish than those of ASP.NET, and I can use JQuery to improve the user experience.
Yes, you can make an ASP.NET page look just like a static web page. The look and feel of a web page is done completely on the client side, using HTML, Javascript and CSS. ASP.NET lets you use all of these things, but it provides the ability to generate output to the page on the server side before sending it to the client's browser. Once it gets to the browser, the HTML, Javascript and CSS will apply just as if the client was loading a static page.
Yes you can, just do not use Web Controls. I have written several Blogs on this so far this year. http://professionalaspnet.com/archive/tags/Thin+ASP/default.aspx
Ultimately, html is sent to the browser irrespective of the server side technology, so question is a bit awkward. But for aesthetics side, asp.net provides features called master pages, themes, skins. By providing these it goes beyond css.
Absolutely yes!
You may be confused with the tutorials which are focused on teaching backside technology and poor on page design. Isn't microsoft.com colourful enough?
Asp .Net just outputs html.
ASP.NET is simply a web application framework. What is sent to the browser is *usually** HTML, so anything that you can do with a static HTML page, you can do with ASP.NET.
ASP.NET can be used to produce very lively and colourful pages, but you need to understand how to create the pizzaz. Mostly that's going to be media and javscript. For that, you need to understand HTML, and then what the ASP.NET Server controls render as in HTML so that you can control and manipulate it in your javascript more easily.
The reason that ASP.NET tutorials feature data and forms is that the need to manage data (and dynamic content deriving from it) is what makes people use ASP.NET rather than static html.