Comparing Web Controls and Mobile Controls

ASP.NET Mobile Web Forms are based on ASP.NET Web Forms Pages. ASP.NET mobile controls provide a flexible toolset that enables you to create content sites and Web applications intended for a wide variety of mobile devices. You can take advantage of the adaptive rendering of the ASP.NET mobile controls while having the flexibility to customize the display for specific devices or types of devices, such as a handheld computer or a mobile phone. The following table provides a side-by-side comparison of the controls used for ASP.NET Web server controls and ASP.NET mobile controls.
Web server control AdRotator Button, ImageButton, LinkButton Calendar Mobile control AdRotator Comments or differences Similar functionality. Mobile control adds ImageKey and NavigateUrlKey properties. Command Mobile control combines the functionality of the Web Forms Button, ImageButton, and LinkButton controls. Calendar Similar functionality. Mobile control does not provide HTML-specific properties directly but exposes an underlying Web Forms Calendar control through the WebCalendar property. PhoneCall Used to actively drop the data line and initiate the call on dial-capable devices. This is similar to the use of the mailto scheme for electronic mail addresses, which starts your e-mail client. CompareValidator Validation is identical. CustomValidator Validation is identical. List Similar functionality. Mobile control can apply templates on a per-device basis. ObjectList Similar functionality. The ObjectList control provides multiple views to show the data collections DeviceSpecific Used to enable property overrides and templates for mobile controls. Form Similar to a page in an ASP.NET Web application. Mobile Web Forms pages can contain multiple Form controls. Image Similar functionality. Mobile control can select an image from a set of device-specific images. Label Same functionality. Link ASP.NET cannot render the mobile control as an image. Use the Image control to create an image link (by specifying the NavigateUrl property on the Image control). Panel Mobile panels can be used to provide device-specific rendering by using the ContentTemplate device templates to replace the panels. RangeValidator Validation is identical.

[no equivalent control]

CompareValidator CustomValidator DataList, Repeater DataGrid [no equivalent control] [no equivalent control]

Image Label Hyperlink

Panel

RangeValidator

RegularExpressionValidator RegularExpression Validation is identical. Validator RequiredFieldValidator RequiredFieldValid Validation is identical. ator CheckBox, CheckBoxList, SelectionList Mobile control combines the functionality of the DropDown, DropDownList, corresponding ASP.NET Web server controls. Use the ListBox, RadioButton, SelectType property (and the associated ListSelectType RadioButtionList enumeration) to define the type of selection list button to render. For example, setting the SelectionList control's SelectType property to the CheckBox enumeration corresponds to the ASP.NET Web server controls CheckBox and CheckBoxList; Dropdown is the same as DropDown and DropDownList. Use the Rows property to specify the number of items shown in the list when the SelectType property is the ListBox or MultiSelectListBox control. [no equivalent control] StyleSheet Web Forms use cascading style sheets rather than StyleSheet controls. Table [no equivalent Use the List, ObjectList, and SelectionList mobile control] controls TextBox TextBox Similar functionality. Mobile control does not provide automatic postback, read-only, or multiline functionality. [no equivalent control] TextView Used to display large blocks of text. Supports basic text formatting. ValidationSummary ValidationSummar Same functionality. Mobile control shows error messages y of validators on a particular form (through the FormToValidate property).