Understanding the runat server attribute

Question

I\'m really new to ASP.NET. I was just checking out a default ASP.NET web application. It comes by default with a few pages (Default.aspx, About.aspx etc).

I notice

Answer 1

The head element contains a runat="server" attribute, which indicates that it is a server control (rather than static HTML). All ASP.NET pages derive from the Page class, which is located in the System.Web.UI namespace. This class contains a Header property that provides access to the page's region. Using the Header property we can set an ASP.NET page's title or add additional markup to the rendered section. It is possible, then, to customize a content page's element by writing a bit of code in the page's Page_Load event handler.

' Programmatically add a  element to the Header

Dim keywords As New HtmlMeta()
keywords.Name = "keywords"
keywords.Content = "master page,asp.net,tutorial"
Page.Header.Controls.Add(keywords)

For more info see Specifying Meta Tags in ASP.NET with VB.NET.