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

You asked why the styles are not applied anymore when removing the runat="server" from the element.

It is simple: by running on the server side, the parser will replace the ~/ from the stylesheet declaration with the root path of the application.

The ~ is illegal in a URL. Thus, if this is not replaced by the parser, the file will not be found thus the stylesheet will not be applied.

Oh, btw, setting the runat="server" attribute on the element will force all its sub-elements to be run on the server, thus why the element is run on the server.