title: ASP.NET web application - 5000 lines of code in 1 page - acceptable?
body: <p>I'm building an ASP .NET 2.0 (C#) based web application, which is primarily intended for intra-net use, i.e. to be used inside an organization's Local Area Network.</p>
  
  <p>With respect to the User Interface, there are 2 approaches which I need to choose from.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Build a 1 page web app, with lots of ASP .NET AJAX 1.0 controls (modal popups) to show categorized content which would otherwise have gone into a separate .aspx page.</p></li>
  <li><p>Use the traditional approach and build multiple pages.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>The 1 page UI looks and feels very cool. However, I have doubts with respect to its scalability.</p>
  
  <p>Agreed that the application is intended for use over a LAN, but since it is a web app, it could potentially be used from over the internet if the client wanted to.</p>
  
  <p>Owing to the 1 page UI, there's already around 2600 lines of code in the single .aspx page and another 1600 lines of code in the code-behind (.aspx.cs)</p>
  
  <p>This is going to grow - to at most - 10,000 lines of code (10,000 in .aspx and 10,000 in .aspx.cs). So I need to know - how much is too much for an ASP .NET based page - is 2600 + 1600 lines of code okay for Intranet AND Internet access? How about 10,000 lines of code? What is the bottle-neck? Is this single-page approach okay or do I need to fall back to the traditional multiple-page approach?</p>