ASP.NET

Lots of things. The most fundamental difference is that ASP.NET pages are compiled rather than interpreted. In ASP, the server would look for code inside special tag delimeters and interpret that code on-the-fly.

<% Response.Write("Hello, world."); %>

In ASP.NET the entire page is transformed into a source file and compiled the first time it is served, and every time the page is served thereafter the compiled version is executed. Those of you familiar with Java Server Pages may recognize this model.

Code no longer has to be embedded in markup. It may now be placed into "normal" source files and compiled. That's the model that I generally use on this site. I have a collection of controls and base classes kept in a DLL, and I reference these classes and controls through page directives and custom tags in the markup.

ASP.NET also supports all the .NET languages, instead of just JScript, VBScript, and the few other scripting languages supported in ASP. The most surreal example of this that I've seen is an ASP.NET page written with COBOL.

For more information, see the white paper "Why ASP.NET? on the ASP.NET web site.

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Currently, Windows 2000 Professional and Server, Windows XP Professional, and Windows .NET Server all support ASP.NET for IIS. Other development efforts such as the Mono Project may eventually enable ASP.NET support for other platforms and web servers.

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From the ASP.NET download page.

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Of course not. ASP.NET can serve content to any browser. It's purely a server-side technology.

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