ASP.NET 2.0 offers two major changes in the lifecycle of an asp.net page. First, ASP.NET 2.0 exposes new events to support new features, including master pages, personalization, and the integrated mobile device support. Second, ASP.NET 2.0 introduces cross-page posting for Web forms.

New Events:

ASP.NET 2.0 provides a more granular page lifecycle method stack as compared to ASP.NET 1.x. The added methods provide a greater level of control to the Web developer. These events can be accessed through the Page object on any ASP.NET page.

Looking at the low level details of the page lifecycle, we can see where many of the features that are available in ASP.NET 2.0, such as themes and personalization, would naturally be implemented. For example, a theme would be processed in the IntializeThemes event, whereas personalization data would be loaded in the load personalization data and later applied in the ApplyPersonalization method. Note that method order is extremely important with respect to which UI elements will determine the final look and feel of your Web applications.