Luke Smith Write today, wrong tomorrow

Aspx or Ashx?

I just got a notification from Windows Live Mail Desktop saying it couldn't find the
url http://mail.services.live.com/DeltaSync_v1.0.0/sync.aspx when
trying to poll for new messages. I thought this as strange since aspx pages are primarily
used for rendering Html content (altho nothing is stopping you from outputting
something
else such as Xaml).

The advantages of using a HttpHandler over a common Page (web form, ASPX) are
multiple: The HttpHandler gets the request very early, before it is processed by the
framework. When the request's recipient is a Page, the ASP.NET framework fires many
events, which may or may not be implemented by the Page. The mechanism is relatively
long and complex, and can be avoided, especially if the request doesn't need web controls.
It is especially well adapted for frequent, fast requests, for example to query the
state of a server-side process (completion). - Source

So why the Live team are using an aspx page I don't know (of course behind the scenes
it may not be deriving from Page and the .aspx extension is just making it backwards
compatible). Maybe Scott can find
out for me.

comments powered by Disqus