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Closed 10 years ago.
I found these questions, but a couple of them were a little old:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/191556/should-i-pursue-asp-net-webforms-or-asp-net-mvc
Do you think ASP.NET MVC will compete with ASP.NET Webforms?
ASP.NET MVC > ASP.NET WebForms, Why?
I do not believe these are duplicates and might be old enough that new light can be shed. If not please close this.
I know that no one framework or language is necessarily the only tool for every job. But, do you see MVC eclipsing webforms or webforms going lower on the priority list for Microsoft? They will have to keep webforms for a long time because so many have invested in it, but they don't have to keep adding new functionality for it.
I don't know if this is a good example, but it reminds me of web parts. I never saw much improvement in it from Microsoft. It works and I thought it was great until I started to really try and get a lot out of it. Then from what I could see it just wasn't being pursued by Microsoft that much, though it stayed in Visual Studio. Maybe that's a bad example; just what I remembered.
EDIT: Also, if anyone has any statements from Microsoft on this subject it is appreciated. No offense to anyone. I was only hoping for something official.
this Microsoft answer:
ASP.NET MVC provides a framework that
enables you to easily implement the
model-view-controller (MVC) pattern
for Web applications. This pattern
lets you separate applications into
loosely coupled, pluggable components
for application design, processing
logic, and display.
ASP.NET MVC is not a replacement for
Webforms. It provides an alternative
choice when designing a Web
application. Using ASP.NET MVC offers
the following advantages:
• It enables you to achieve and
maintain a clear separation of
concerns
• It facilitates test driven
development (TDD)
• It provides more control over the
URLs you publish in the application
and over the HTML that is emitted by
the application
They both have different strengths.
MVC is great for public internet sites where precise control of the html and page lifecycle is important.
Webforms are great for corporate lan intranet sites, where development speed is critical, upstream bandwidth to the web server is plentiful, but memory on the server is more constrained.
Honestly, more asp.net programmers are probably doing the latter than the former.
WebForms are not going away. Microsoft gave it's developers a way to choose between traditional asp.net programming and the popular MVC way of programming. It's not competing against webforms it's just another choice for developers to use. Very Smart move from Microsoft to keep a hold of it's developer base.
I think ASP.NET MVC allows building much more maintainable applications. It also allows for automated testing of a very large part of the code.
If a website is reasonable in size and/or is going to have a reasonable life span then MVC plays a very good role.
I understand the argument of SEO for public sites, but I think the benefits of MVC make it excellent candidate for even intranet applications. Perhaps with some good collection user controls i.e helper methods, MVC can start dominating the field.
I believe rather developers' focus of interest will shift towards MVC.
As for the practical use scenarios, WebForms will likely continue to be used for applications and rather "closed" sites, while MVC will be the preferred choice for those sites facing public (and search engines, yes).
Just like everything else, I think further development will depend on how popular it becomes. The more people use it, the more Microsoft will likely invest in it's future.
It already seems to be quite popular, and judging from the popularity of similar frameworks in other languages (e.g. struts or rails) I think it'll continue to gain popularity.
See my response last time:
Is ASP.NET MVC swept under the rug to make room for MVC?
I believe ASP.NET MVC is not here to replace WebForms.
Instead it will give an alternative for ASP.NET developers who want to develop with separation of logic and view in mind, as well as performance and ease.
The introduction of .Net was bad for developers that had mastered VbScript, ASP Classic and being the few elite that could actually debug in Visual InterDev.
MVC is bad for those continuing on the path of WebForms only.
Pretty much by this time you should be able to recognize the hand writting on the walls as to whats coming down the pike.
Related
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Closed 9 years ago.
I have a website that primarily renders pages from a database. We also have a user management system in the website, requiring login, profile management, credit card processing, etc. There are some places in the site that have application functionality, like a forum, but most of the site is dynamic content, rendering from a the database. Content is entered with an inhouse CMS that is not tied to the website.
I'm upgrading the website from ASP to .Net 4.5 framework. What is the best option for this new project in VS 2012? An ASP.Net MVC 4 Application (Internet Application) or a new ASP.Net Web Site (Razor v2)?
I'm leaning towards ASP.Net MVC 4 Application (Internet Application, Razor), instead of Web site.
UPDATE: I've actually done a lot of reading on this, whether here in SO, or other sites, and still am not sure which is the best option for migrating to .Net from classic ASP for my specific needs.
Current:
Classic ASP website (100's of pages), public facing.
Most pages are rendered from a database, with template HTML in .asp page, when data populated from database. Could be compared to a WordPress site in function. Content is entered into CMS, and rendered on the website via templates.
Members log in to the site, have profiles, make payments, and more.
Have a forum
All URLs designed for search engines. URL Rewriting in IIS. I need to keep the existing URLs, and have them work with the new .Net site. IMPORTANT.
Client side operations are a must, integrating with jQuery tools, lightbox, etc.
This is not an "application" website, per say. It is a public facing website, like MSNBC or similar, that gets updated frequently (several times per month, if not more).
I'm at a loss for choosing the ideal project type for this migration to .Net. I don't think web forms are a good choice, and MVC 4 appears to be a good choice based on what I've read, but perhaps I can do everything that is necessary with a standard ASP.Net Website (Razor v2) template.
I'd like to get some opinions on which way to go with this, from people that have done it already. Thanks for your help.
I would use .NET MVC 4 . But there is not much online source if you get stuck. But I think you will survive anyway. The only downside is that you need more time to learn the new stuff because it is very different from the old stuff.
If you have enough time, go with the MVC 4. Once you do the project with it, you can do any changes easily in the future.
There are three kinds of websites you can create out of the box (and a number of subtypes). ASP.NET WebForms, ASP.NET Web Pages, and ASP.NET MVC. Which one you choose is as much a matter of personal preference as it is anything else, although certain kinds of sites make certain things easier to do.
In general (and these are not hard and fast rules)
WebForms - This is the way that 90% of the people do it, and there is lots of knowledge and books and information out there. It works, but has a lot of things you have to deal with in terms of creating standard conforming html, testability and maintainability. There are solutions to all these problems, and they're well known, but in general it's considered "old technology" (not as old as classic asp though)
WebPages - This technology is based on the Razor view engine, and treats pages more like classic ASP where you intermix code and html. In general, this allows you to quickly create web sites with functionality behind them, but at the cost of longer term maintainability and testability. As with anything, you could force process to solve these problems, but the framework itself is not really geared towards it.
MVC - This technology is based on the well known and well understood MVC user interface pattern. It focuses on separation of concerns to improve maintainability, testability, and ease of development. It does require a significant departure from traditional ASP.NET development, and a steep learning curve. You have to know HTML, CSS and JavaScript in much more depth than with WebForms.
I use MVC for everything I can, it's just more logical for me. MVC is one of those things that is really confusing until you reach an "ah hah!" moment, then it all snaps into place.
What you choose is entirely up to you. You have to decide HOW you want to develop, and that will guide your decision.
I have been working with C# for past four years at the enterprise level. Now, I have taken a decision of moving to Web side of the things. Since I am well versed with C# and WCF I naturally zeroed in on ASP.NET as I need not learn a new Programming language. Learning just the Web Framework will suffice.
I have read a lot regarding MVC, so starting out with MVC 2.
My Question is Will I face any roadblocks if I learn MVC without learning Web Forms? Keeping in mind that this is my first foray into Web Development?
Looking forward to some good suggestions.
I was in your exact same position. The only problems you may have is wrapping your head around postbacks and what tha means. Having said that, MVC2 will teach you how to write better code instead of the typical spaghetti that comes asociated with webforms.
If you're new to MVC2 I'd recommend buying Wrox Professional ASP.NET MVC2 from writer Scott Hanselman.
Learning web development these days is hard as you need to be an expert on so many different things!
You need to learn HTML/CSS/JavaScript(ie, JQuery)/Json regardless of the server side framework you are using if you are creating “rich” web applications.
I would say starting with ASP.NET MVC is not a bad option before moving onto ASP.NET Web Forms. You are likely to hit both going forward, but as ASP.NET MVC does not hide what’s going on so much, I think it may be a better start.
However if you just wish to create simple forms on the web, it is hard to beat ASP.NET Web Forms, but as soon as you wish to do something more advanced, the Web Forms complex page cycle will give you pain.
If you're looking to apply your web skills to enterprise environments, you'd probably find a lot of environments still leveraging Web Forms. Outside of that, I can't imagine it would really hurt you that much.
The bigger thing about web development is getting familiar with HTML/CSS/JavaScript(ie, JQuery). The skills learned there are applicable to either environment. You'd probably be able so switch back end frameworks rather painlessly as long as you're used to c# and all the web stuff previously mentioned.
I think it depends on what type of applications you are going to be developing. I believe web forms would be easier for you to learn with the background you already have in WCF. But it might not be worth it if the applications you are developing are better suited for MVC rather than web forms.
My recommendation would be to determine what type of applications you are going to be developing and then look at the strengths and weakness's of each and then determine which one you are going to focus on.
You most probably won't. There are some concepts that belong to the web-application environment (session, caching, etc) that are common but you'd have to learn about them anyway. They are two separate frameworks so nothing very specific about one of them could help you with the other.
You will undoubtedly run into issues when knowing a "new" way of doing things without having been brought up in the "old" way of doing things. It's unavoidable, really. I'd suggest learning the basics of WebForms code if possible, if for no other reason than to be able to trudge through it when necessary. Of course, if you find yourself in the position of having to support a WebForms application, you'll learn by doing just like anything else.
This question reminds me of my early days in .NET (which were the very early days of .NET in general) and trying to find assistance with various issues. I was an entry level developer, hitting up forums and such with questions. Everywhere I went, people weren't really adopting .NET just yet. They were all old Windows platform developers, whereas .NET was my first Windows development (I was all UNIX/Linux in school). Invariably, nearly every question I asked was answered with something suggesting that I "just use COM." Of course, I wasn't familiar with this. It was "the old way" and I was using "the new way."
It was difficult to work past that, and you'll likely face the same issue here. Basically, when people have made a career out of doing something the one single way they know how, they tend to expect everyone else to know it as well and will cling tightly to it as their bread and butter. You can be better than that, but it'll require patience :)
I assume that your development experience included Windows Forms. In terms of the transition from Windows Forms to ASP.NET WebForms, there's no doubt that would be an easier transition. Whether that would be the best transition is another question. And I believe the answer is without a doubt, no.
MVC allows you to gain an understanding of the way the Web works. Understanding GET and POST, Requests and Responses, not to mention HTML, CSS, JavaScript, et al.
I would not hesitate to recommend MVC.
I don't understand why you don't want to learn Web Forms. Learning Web Forms is just like learning abc's. You'll learn it as you go along with MVC. My suggestion is, Just go with the flow in your learning of MVC and you'll be surprise that you're already learning Web Forms.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I'm doing some maintenance on a classic ASP application for my client, and as I'm looking through the ASP, the following question comes to mind - would it be easier to convert a classic ASP app to ASP.NET MVC or ASP.NET WebForms?
In many ways, it appears that at least the HTML of ASP might be easier to convert to MVC than it would be to rip out the HTML chunks and turn them into ASP.NET controls, repeaters, datagrids, etc. Plus having to add in handling and logic for ViewState, etc. might be added work.
I don't think my client will be requesting any upgrade like this, so this is just theoretical.
Let's assume that this ASP code is written very well (which isn't always true of course) so really the question is, will a best-case-well-designed ASP site migrate better to MVC than WebForms?
(Note that I'm very new to ASP.NET MVC, so I might be missing something crucial here).
It depends a lot on how the classic asp app is structured.
The server tag mixed in with HTML is similar to asp.net mvc but MVC is not as messy (or not supposed to be). You might be able to move the classic asp presentation code to a MVC view easier than to a web form. Also classic asp apps were usually developed with the statelessness of the web in mind. There probably is not anything in your classic asp that matches postabacks or viewstate. Classic ASP also uses normal html elements as opposed to asp.net webform controls. In these respects it matches MVC a lot closer than webforms.
If you do not know asp.net webforms or asp.net mvc I would say MVC is the way to go.
If you know webforms very well and don't know much about MVC I would say webforms is the way to go.
But, if your client for some reason does want a redevelopment of the site I would say go with MVC. It's always nice to have a client pay for part of your experience development as long as you can deliver.
On another note I'm always taken aback when I come across a client who wants me to do work on their classic asp site. In every single case the site is a mess. The worse part is that they are usually filled with huge security holes.
I think in a lot of cases it could be easier to convert to MVC than Webforms. Most classic ASP apps demonstrate very little separation of concerns so the biggest task is probably exactly that, seperating out the logic into data access, business logic, business entities and UI components. In doing that it could well be easier to convert the inline ASP code to a view, the business logic into controllers and the business entities into the model.
I don't think one would be easier to convert then the other.
You can code ASP.NET almost the same as you code ASP if you wanted putting a few crucial elements in the codebehind that you could access in the aspx. No databinding, no gridview and no repeater. The view state is there to help you can is easy to figure out, it is not necessary to use it if you don't want and can be turned off in the web.config and turned on with a page attribute. Web forms also have an AspCompat mode which allows access to Request and Response objects or asp, which will allow for page by page conversion if desired.
As for MVC.net, the method for displaying the HTML is quite similar. That in my opinion is where the similarities end. You would still need to separate out all you logic into the MVC model.
Coming from ASP and going to Web.Form and now MVC.Net I can tell you that WebForms were a little annoying/frustrating to learn, with 90% of the MS tutorials teaching you the worst possible habits IE (SQL connections on the page, dragging datasets around in designers). However, once you get past that one is able to do a lot of thing much more quickly then in asp(pagination or build a simple datatable with editing for example), I have however STILL never seen a large webforms project with an n-tier design that I thought was easy to follow, implement and use.
MVC.NET is like a godsend. It forces patterns and practices down your throat, it has strict rules that are adhered to by most. It allows for easy code coverage and separation of concerns. After being frustrated with webforms for years it finally feels like I am not hacking things together when attempting to do something that I cant drag off the tool bar.
I personally would try webforms so you will know how much better MVC is when you start using it.
There is more to ASP.NET-MVC than the apparent similarities between view code and ASP inline code. There is all the Model and Controller parts to consider which is very different from the way most ASP is written.
That said I would say that MVC would be the best place to start.
IMO WebForms attempt to hide html too much for my liking and may cause your project to take longer than you would like due to converting a lot of html into the webforms controls.
On the other hand MVC allows you to reuse some of this logic while making your application much more maintainable and with the appropriate Architectural Pattern your application can be developed and refactored much quicker than any WebForms project.
I say MVC all the way!
Either way, it's always best to start from scratch and implemented only the logic.
I started ASP a long time ago (more than 12 years ago) and only in 2006 I moved to ASP.NET 2.0, not even today I know all, but I do know pretty much what I do everyday at work.
In my opinion now, and looking back to my knowledge of ASP I would go to Web Forms instead of MVC, first, it's a language that it's in the "market" some some yeras now and very used across the world, while MVC is still in Beta, so, not suitable for production environment (says Microsoft - even if this site is written in MVC).
I do tend to make confusion with MVC diagram still, and there are more tricks than I want to learn if I need to do a fast change of one ASP project.
It depends. The ASP.NET MVC is no silver bullet and in many ways takes a few steps backwards in terms of developer productivity.
If you have a tight budget and need to get this done fast I believe ASP.Net is the way to go since it has the wealth of controls like grids, paging, validation etc that you can use right out of the box. Using these controls will no doubt save a lot of dev time. All of these controls that most consider pedestrian by now in ASP.NET all have to be created from scratch or taken from the Internet when you use the ASP.NET MVC project.
On the other hand if you have the time and budget now and going forward, and you want to have a solution that is rock solid, and more easily lends itself to test driven development, the ASP.NET MVC is probably the best choice.
Definately ASP.NET MVC is better in terms of style. (That said, you don't have to use Repeaters and other silly controls in a WebForms app, you can simply use inline code just like you would in MVC.)
MVC in general though would be an easier port, give you a better structure and be a more pleasant experience.
Web Forms is more object-oriented, while MVC is like classic ASP on top of .NET code. Model design should be the same using Web Forms or MVC. The only difference is that Web Forms has an object-oriented abstraction to the UI and MVC uses functions and code snippets instead of classes to organize UI code.
ASP.NET MVC is better than Web Forms for automated unit testing of the UI. However, automated unit testing in general is bad practice and even worse for the UI. Manual testing is the best way to build a quality application and to make the best use of development time. Creating automated unit tests is a waste of time and you end up with junk code to maintain with the core code. Lots of developers like automated unit tests because they think they are proof their application works, which is false. They also are trying to avoid designing applications using UML so they are using test driven development to design using code which is responsible for poorly designed applications. With TDD, you are refactoring code you wrote poorly without thinking about the big picture using models in the first place.
So MVC is useless. Web Forms uses a better object oriented model whereas MVC is more like old style classic ASP and other older design patterns. This is 2010 and MVC is dead. Web Forms is like ORM for the UI.
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)?
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
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)
Yes for my new projects. But not for current production software.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
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Closed 10 years ago.
I'm starting a new web project and I am considering two presentation frameworks. I am thinking either about ASP.NET MVC or Silverlight. I would tend toward Silverlight since I'm quite experienced .NET developer while I have just a basic knowledge of ASP.NET controls.
It is mainly going to be an iternal
product so browsers are not an issue.
You still have not written a proper description about the nature of your application. It is difficult to assess which technology is a good fit without first knowing well enough the domain the application is being applied to, and the problems it is designed to solve.
In general, Microsoft is positioning these array of presentation technologies on the "Reach vs Rich" continuum. You have "plain old" HTML and Javascript on one end, acceptable by the most number of client machines out there, and the ultimate full-blown WPF on the other side where limited number of machines can handle. You did mention this to be an internal app, so WPF via XBAP or ClickOnce are also possible.
So the scale would align this way: (reach) ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight, WPF (rich).
So the question is just how rich you want/need it to be for the users until it hurts the deployment base? Frankly if all you fetch are forms and tabular data and statistics then regular ASP.NET web forms are just fine. If you want on-the-fly resizable graphs and client-side interactive with back-end WCF web services Silverlight can do that. If you want even more powerful graphical rendering than WPF via the remote deployment options is your bet.
Silverlight 3 with RIA seems to be very powerful. I hadn't programmed for 6 years after working on VB6. I about a months time, here I am developing a web applicaton that uses SL3, WCF and entity framework and I feel very comfortable.
The silverlight forum and stackoverflow ofcourse are very active and for some of the problems that i've had had, I have been able to get a solution easily.
The one thing I'm not sure of yet is performance.
Both personally and professionally, I write C# daily for Windows forms apps and Windows services. Even after years of this, I find it FAR faster to whip out a web app with PHP or Python than to do it with .NET. Maybe things have changed with Silverlight, but to me the learning curve on ASP.NET is ridiculous compared to the payback.
Edit: The above was written a year or so before I tried ASP.NET MVC. I find ASP.NET MVC wonderfully intuitive and clean.
Don't forget Silverlight is going to require a plug-in to use, and to my knowledge it has not been "natively" added to IE, let alone the rest of the browsers. So there could be tons of maintenance/support issues with that alone. PDF files are considered "ubiquitous" by now, but you still run into a user or two that doesn't have Adobe Reader on their computer and it often occurs at a bad time and then you're scurrying around to get an installer.
At a fundamental level, this is what has kept me from doing Silverlight for my web apps. I think the technology behind it is good, but considering nowadays you could get equal visibility/functionality with a nice Webforms/MVC/AJAX/jQuery combination (mix and match to your liking), I'd say stick with ASP.NET.
IMO you may be better off with ASP.Net. While you would have a slight learning curve, you'd be developing on a proven, reliable, scalable model rather than something thats in beta and will likely change before RTM.
Also, with AJAX these days its possible to get a pretty slick user experience out of ASP.Net.
I would recommend ASP.NET, no additional download is needed.
I used Silverlight but a lot of companies are not allowing users to install anything also home users are not happy to install browser plugins, Silverlight is not so known as Flash player.
For beginners and advanced programmers you can find video tutorials at.
http://www.asp.net/mvc
It's hard to recommend one over the other without knowing what your application is. Whatever you do decide, make sure you keep your target audience in mind; not everyone is going to have Silverlight installed on their computers.
Personally, unless I was designing an incredibly interactive and beautiful web app, I would go with ASP.NET (with or without the MVC framework) if only for the fact that there is a ton of reference material for it while Silverlight is still relatively new territory.
It is mainly going to be an iternal product so browsers are not an issue. It's more about the price of development. Is it easier to learn Silverlight model or ASP.NET model? I expect that Silverlight is based on WebServices and so it might clearly divide my application code into a business logic (service) and presentation (silverlight application).
Given your background in .NET but limited Asp .net experience... I assume you are more of a service/client guy. Which will mean your javascript is probably just as limited... If this is the case, I'd go with Silverlight. It will ease you into WPF, which you may be likely to use in the future.
But more importantly working with Silverlight 2.0 feels more like building a sandboxed desktop application. More than a web application. You will be more at home with Silverlight if your prior experience is with client apps.
If you want to break into building web sites/applications go with ASP .NET MVC.
Either way knowledge of the typical ASP .NET controls will not go far, since they are for WebForms.
I would say - unless you need flash-like animation and interaction capabilities - go for ASP.NET. It's simpler to program against and doesn't require extra downloads for the users.
I think Silverlight is only required when you want to create applications like Flash. These applications are combined into a single executable which are downloaded once on the client machine. They can communicate with the server if they need any data or any functionality which resides on the server. The end user needs to install the Silverlight environment add-on to help run these applications.
Whereas if you create an asp.net application, its code resides and executes on the server itself and hence a simple internet browser can execute it. But the downside is that for user-interactive applications, there need to be separate calls made between the server and client machine when the code requires.