I'm wondering about one thing - as we know, the MVC pattern is stateless (it doesn't use the ViewState, so we use only HTML controls), but if we use them in WebForms as well, it'll become stateless too ? so, by doing this, we are getting closer to the MVC pattern ?
7 Answers
You get closer to one aspect of MVC i suppose but its still a night and day difference.
MVC is fundamentally about the model view controller pattern, not what kind of controls your using to write your code. Unless you implement an MVC pattern within webforms (which people did a lot before ASP.NET MVC was released) and migrate away from the postback model in webforms then your platform is still considerably different.
If you want to do that then just use ASP.NET MVC.
Comments
As with any software models, there isn't necessarily a hard-defined line between fundamental principles. I've been developing applications with loose implementations of MVC in WebForms for years.
The lack of pseudo-state (I won't give WebForms the credit for actual state, the web is stateless) in MVC is one of a number of aspects of the ASP.NET implementation of it, it is not part of the actual MVC pattern.
On top of all this, I can see why people miss Web Controls and want to use them in MVC. But why would you want to use HTML helpers in WebForms? If you're willing to do this type of groundwork then you probably should be using MVC.