Has ASP.NET MVC made Web Forms a Legacy Platform?

Question

Last week at Mix '09, the final version of ASP.NET MVC 1.0 was released.

Some of the stated benefits of this framework are:

• Clear separation of concerns
• Testability - support for Test-Driven Development
• Fine-grained control over HTML and JavaScript
• Intuitive URLs

Now, Microsoft are being careful to tout this as being "an alternative, not a replacement, for ASP.NET Web Forms", but given the advantages mentioned above, I'm wondering:

1. How long will it be until "classic" ASP.NET Web Forms is considered to be a "legacy" framework?
2. If you were kicking off the development of a new .NET web project today, why would you choose to use Web Forms instead of the ASP.NET MVC offering?

Answer 1

Good questions. I think ultimately, the answer is going to be the development team's expertise and the project needs that will decide that. ASP.NET web forms is so heavily used that it likely isn't going away anytime soon. Plus, there are so many custom controls and third-party support such as components and books. The main benefit of web forms is how easy it is to get a dynamic website up and going. It really is a RAD way of developing websites.

However, once that team has more experience with creating larger websites with much higher demands in terms of scalability, reliability, and test-ability, then they will look towards other solutions for that. In this case, they will realize that web forms are harder for unit-testing. They may also see that viewstates reduce performance and look for possible solutions.

Although MVC has the stated benefits, it is unlikely that anyone will convert their sites to use this new framework right away or ever. Plus, it requires the team to learn the new technology, and work out the new bugs. The team will have to learn new ways to do the exact same thing. For example, how easy is it to support uploading a file using MVC?

As I saw recently, there isn't a reason you can't create a site using MVC and web forms together. So you may see more hybrids in the near future. But I doubt that web forms will ever go away.

I kind of think about web forms like the way VB1 changed the way Windows applications are created on the desktop. To this day, the RAD way of creating application still exists and will never go away.

Answer 2

I do not believe WebForms will ever retire.

I've been using WebForms at work in business applications and MVC at home for some private things. Though I really like MVC I do not see how this could be possible to implement really complex UI logic with HTML/CSS/JavaScript. It will quickly become unmanageable and will be quite unsecure since JavaScript can be switched off to prevent disabling some controls or hiding some information. On the contrary, turning off JavaScript with WebForms will virtually turn the page dead for any action, either authorized or not.

Both platforms will continue to evolve. For general web sites and HTML/CSS lovers MVC is a way to go, with complex applications you would want object-oriented architecture and artificial event handling even though it abstracts you from the stateless nature of HTTP.

So, pick up what is best for you.

P.S. Dropping WebForms altogether will jeopardize the future of numerous projects and companies throughout the world. Microsoft folks would not want to become an object of hatred and the trigger that started the third world war.

Answer 3

Keep in mind that MVC STILL uses WebForms for it's default View Engine. Sure, you can replace it with another one, but WebForms is still a core part of it.

Also, not everyone prefers to tightly control the HTML or the Routing. That's not my attitude, but some people just want their job done with the smallest effort.

And aren't .asmx Files technically part of the "old" Model as well? I can say for sure that a lot of people would not like to see them go away.

Still, I personally see ASP.net MVC becoming the main Web Engine for ASP.net in the future, although not in .net 4.0 yet.

Answer 4

WebForms will still have a place for those that want a pseudo-stateless web application that they can easily put together by dragging and dropping. For those that don't have to or want to understand how HTTP works. It's the ultimate in RAD for web applications.

ASP.NET MVC on the other hands allows much more finer control at the cost of more responsibility. You get complete control over your HTML however that means you have to sanitize/encode your output yourself. Your application for the most part has to be completely stateless and for some ASP.NET WebForms/Windows WinForms developers that it's a bit hard to wrap their mind around.

I don't think either will ever dominate the other though one may be favored.

Answer 5

5 Reasons You Should Take a Closer Look at ASP.NET MVC

Answer 6

You're asking when a newly-released web platform, ASP.NET MVC, will replace Web Forms, which has been around for seven years.

If we'd been crying out for ASP.NET MVC for the past seven years, then it wouldn't have taken seven years before ASP.NET MVC was released. The fact is, not everyone sees a need for this. Many of us have been creating complex, highly-scalable web applications for most of those seven years.

We even knew how to make them testable, and to separate presentation from business logic and data access. ASP.NET MVC may enforce this separation, but I've done it by using coding standards and code reviews, and by saying, "there's no unit test for that", and "get that busines logic out of the UI".

Also, if I really needed more control of the HTML, I would write my own control to generate the HTML.