ASP.NET Controls under the hood

Question

I want to learn (basically) about how ASP.NET controls work. I know the end result has to be some kinda rendered HTML. How do the controls encapsulate stuff? How does it tie in to the whole ASP.NET flow? My team has written a widgets library that wraps the native controls and then adds custom styling etc etc. and I need to be contributing to this library. Many thank you's

Answer 1

The two places I would start would be Truly Understanding Dynamic Controls and Truly Understanding Viewstate.

Answer 2

Learning the ASP.NET Page Life Cycle is important to answering your questions.

Answer 3

Nikhil Kothari has written the Bible for this, entitled "Developing Microsoft ASP.NET Server Controls and Components". You can pick up a copy here for less than a dollar :-)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0735615829/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used