Thanks to the successful design of ASP.NET 1.0 and 1.1, only a few of the changes appearing in ASP.NET 2.0 were fixes for existing functionality. Overall, ASP.NET 2.0 retained the same basic abstraction (the web forms model) and just added new higher-level features, the most notable of which are listed below:
Master Pages
Master pages are reusable page templates. For example, they can be used to provide the same header, footer, and navigation controls within each page in a web application.
Themes
Themes allow you to define a standard set of appearance characteristics for Web controls. Once defined, you can apply them to the website, giving it a consistent look and feel.
Navigation
The ASP.NET navigation platform includes a mechanism for defining sitemaps that describe the logical organization of pages on a Web site. In addition, there is also a set of navigation controls that use this information to allow users to navigate the site.
Security and Membership
ASP.NET 2.0 added several security-related features, including automatic support for storing user credentials, a role-based authorization system, and out-of-the-box controls for typical security tasks such as logging in, registering, and recovering a forgotten password.
Data source controls
The Data Source Controls model allows you to define how a page interacts with a data source in a declarative way in the markup, rather than by manually writing data access code. Best of all, this tool doesn’t force you to abandon a convenient component-based design solution: linking to a dedicated data component is as easy as linking directly to a database.
Web Parts
One of the most common types of web applications is the portal, which provides centralized placement of various information using individual panels on a single web page. Web Parts provide a ready-made platform for creating a portal with a floating layout, configurable views and even drag-and-drop support.
Profiles
Profiles allow you to store user-relevant information in a database without writing special code. Instead, ASP.NET takes care of all the time-consuming work of retrieving profile data when needed and saving it in case of any changes.
