The HTTP protocol is a stateless protocol means when you request a page again the value assign to the control is lost. To retain value of a control view state is used. By default, almost all ASP.NET controls automatically preserve view state.
View State is implemented as a hidden form field known as _VIEWSTATE that is automatically created in a Web Forms page. If you look at the source code of the HTML page in the browser, you will observe that a hidden form field is added to the page. It should look like:
View state is preserved only if you post form data to the same page. If you visit another Web page through a
link or post the form to another page, the view state information is lost.
View state is useful in form validation scenarios. Suppose a user has entered a lengthy form incorrectly or incompletely. You wish to re-display the form to the user with an error message so that the user can complete the form correctly. In this situation, you can show the data that the user has already entered in the form so that the user does not have to fill the whole form again. This can be made possible through view state.
But, sometimes you may wish to disable view state for a certain control or for a page. If the view state contains a lot of data for instance, it can slow down the rendering of the page.
ASP.NET controls have an EnableViewState property, which takes a Boolean value. You can use this property to enable or disable the view state for the control.
You can disable the view state for an entire page if the page has a lot of data and you do not need view state. This enables the page to be re-loaded quickly. You can enable or disable view state for a page using a Page directive.