Web Forms is an outdated version of ASP.NET (2002). But for the time being, it is a giant layer of abstraction designed to provide a classic event-driven graphical user interface through a web environment. The idea was to make web development look like development using Windows Forms for desktop applications. Developers no longer had to deal with sequences of independent HTTP requests and responses. They could think in terms of a user interface that supported the state. Meanwhile, Microsoft had the opportunity to migrate the army of Windows desktop application developers into the new world of web applications.