The
Web.config file that contains the configuration for a Web application has grown considerably over the past few releases of the .NET Framework as new features have been added, such as Ajax, routing, and integration with IIS 7. This has made it harder to configure or start new Web applications without a tool like Visual Studio. In .the NET Framework 4, the major configuration elements have been moved to the
machine.config file, and applications now inherit these settings. This allows the
Web.config file in ASP.NET 4 applications either to be empty or to contain just the following lines, which specify for Visual Studio what version of the framework the application is targeting:
