How Do Visualforce Pages Compare to S-Controls?

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

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 Lightning Platform 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