Visualforce Developer’s Guide

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How Do Visualforce Pages Compare to S-Controls?

S-controls have been superseded by Visualforce pages. Organizations that haven’t previously used s-controls can’t create them. Existing s-controls are unaffected, and can still be edited.

Important

Visualforce pages are considered the next-generation of s-controls and should be used instead of s-controls whenever possible, both for their increased performance and the ease with which they can be written. The following table outlines the differences between Visualforce pages and s-controls.
Visualforce Pages S-Controls
Required technical skills HTML, XML HTML, JavaScript, Ajax Toolkit
Language style Tag markup Procedural code
Page override model Assemble standard and custom components using tags Write HTML and JavaScript for entire page
Standard Salesforce component library Yes No
Access to built-in platform behavior Yes, through the standard controller No
Data binding Yes

Developers can bind an input component (such as a text box) with a particular field (such as Account Name). If a user saves a value in that input component, it is also saved in the database.

 No

Developers can't bind an input component with a particular field. Instead, they must write JavaScript code that uses the API to update the database with user-specified field values.
Stylesheet inheritance Yes No, must bring in Salesforce stylesheets manually
Respect for field metadata, such as uniqueness Yes, by default

If a user attempts to save a record that violates uniqueness or requiredness field attributes, an error message is automatically displayed and the user can try again.

 Yes, if coded in JavaScript using a describe API call

If a user attempts to save a record that violates uniqueness or requiredness field attributes, an error message is only displayed if the s-control developer wrote code that checked those attributes.
Interaction with Apex Direct, by binding to a custom controller Indirect, by using Apex webService methods through the API
Performance More responsive because markup is generated on the Force.com platform Less responsive because every call to the API requires a round trip to the server—the burden rests with the developer to tune performance
Page container Native In an iFrame