Do you plan move from ASP.Net Web Forms to ASP.Net MVC?

Question

If yes, when? and how much time do you think that the process will take to migrate your current projects (if it's the case)?

Answer 1

I've been using it for a few months now. I absolutely love MVC. Converting existing projects may not be realistic, depending on available time. As I see it, Web Forms simulates windows forms development for the old VB crowd. While MVC doesn’t pretend it’s something it’s not and follows the Http process more closely.

A few plusses I see in MVC

1) It’s testable with unit tests

2) Direct control over Html. We make websites, how do we accept not being able to control all our html?

3) No viewstate baggage

4) No control tree to waste time rendering

5) Automatic binding of a modal from a form post

6) It can be rather sexy

And a few disadvantages

1) No more web controls (and many rich 3rd party controls are lost)

2) Slower to develop in

3) Large learning curve

4) Still in Beta (CTP soon though)

Answer 2

ASP.NET MVC is not meant to replace WebForms. They are different technologies and are designed for different purposes.

Making a blanket statement of saying that I'll only use one and not the other is a very narrow minded approach, as you're missing the pros and cons of each technology.

Microsoft is commited to both technologies going forward and there are quite a few sweet new features coming in WebForms 4.0.

I'll be using WebForms and ASP.NET MVC, but looking at the needs of the current project so that I make the right decision for the current implementation

Answer 3

Yes for my new projects. But not for current production software.

Answer 4

Yes, in as orderly a fashion as possible.

MVC opens .NET up to the world of Best Practices for Agile development. It specifically addresses concerns about Separation of Concerns, and coupling/cohesion. It also lets us write more-portable software without creating a dependency on any vendor-specific references or components.

It unquestionably is a successor to WebForms, along with WPF, regardless of whatever PR you might read.

The Wikipedia entry is pretty clear, even before being updated for Microsoft's MVC.

Answer 5

Assuming you prefer ASP.NET MVC to Web Forms, it's worth it for a system that's in active development/maintenance.

They can coexist side-by-side, so it's possible to migrate parts of the application (new ones, or selected old ones) and see how it works out. If it's a success, keep going.

An "all or nothing" migration could be disastrous, though - investing a lot without quick feedback is a huge risk.

Answer 6

WebForms are for rich UIs

These can be done just the same with MVC or Webforms. A year from now rich MVC based toolkits will arrive (technically they're already here if you like YUI, ExtJS, etc.) and make this argument null and void.

migrate your current projects

Migrating an existing WebForms project to MVC doesn't make a lot of sense. What are you going to gain? Using MVC for a new project however can make a lot of sense depending on your requirements.

Answer 7

I was never really fond of WebForms to begin with so getting to work with MVC was like a breath of fresh air to me. I've always much preferred the separation of concerns as I could work on the chunks that I was really good at developing, the logic and the data access, and leave the presentation work to the members of the team who had that natural ability. I think the MVC library makes it easier for teams to work together on individual pages as one person can work on the controller and the other person can work on the view.

All that being said, when I'm working on projects where I don't need to focus as much on the coding and it is more display oriented, I still go back to the WebForms because they are so much easier to implement and get up and running. Both have their places and I don't think one will ever supersede the other.

Answer 8

I've been using ASP.NET MVC for several months now and I prefer it to Web Forms. However, I don't see myself migrating my existing projects to MVC. For me, it would be rather pointless. However, all of my new ASP.NET projects will (or should be) developed using MVC, as it is a much better (and more flexible) framework.

Answer 9

Personnaly I restricted ASP.NET MVC for lightweight Front Office Web Sites.

But still using ASP.NET WebForms for Righ BackOffice Applications to take advantage of rich custom controls and some of other nice features of Web Forms.

Answer 10

Another plus for mvc is that javascript like jquery is much easier to implement, so if you plan on using a lot of js, mvc might be the way to go.

Answer 11

No, there's no reason to. It's an alternative style, one I am not fond of. But that's just my opinion; a lot of people like it and I hope it works well for them.

Answer 12

As already said, they're not mutually exclusive, and I play to make good use of both.

IMO MVC is better for web sites, while WebForms are better for web applications.

For example, this site is a perfect showcase for where ASP.NET MVC is a good choice because of the nature of the site and what needs to be accomplished; other good examples would be a web store, or a project management site (like Basecamp), or a social network.

If you were developing a corporate CRM/ERP system, however, I'd stick with WebForms to get rich controls and a more "desktop-like" programming model, since a CRM application is traditionally the domain of a desktop application.

Answer 13

ASP.NET MVC fits my desired style of development better, but I'm wary of trusting myself to it whilst it's not been RTM. It also is different enough that our legacy code will not work with it. If we had been practising Domain-Driven Development things might have been easier, but ...