>Having only read about ASP.NET (no experience) I read of the hidden "__VIEWSTATE" control and assumed that its purpose was to communicate state across pages. It seems to operate, if I read correctly, on POSTed pages only, and essentially places encrypted but referenceable values form the prior page(s) inside itself.
with ASP.NET, you have the ability to control state stored in a database, instead of just using the Session object, which is available just on the server running the webserver...
Claudio Lassala