Ive noticed that there seems to be no real difference between a view and a partial view. For instance, one can create a view but can render it as a
To answer your question specifically, when adding a new view in Visual Studio, you will get some very basic markup generated for you as a starting point, based off of your selections in the dialog.
Here is the generated markup in Visual Studio 2010 (VB.NET) for the different combinations of the "Partial" checkbox and the "Layout" checkbox:
# "Create as a partial view" unchecked
# "Use a layout or master page:" unchecked
@Code
Layout = Nothing
End Code
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head runat="server">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
<title>MyView</title>
</head>
<body>
<div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
# "Create as a partial view" unchecked
# "Use a layout or master page:" checked
@Code
ViewData("Title") = "MyView"
Layout = "~/ThePath/ToThe/Layout.vbhtml"
End Code
<h2>MyView</h2>
# "Create as a partial view" checked
# "Use a layout or master page:" greyed out
# returns an empty file
As you can see there is nothing fancy going on in the background or special properties being set in a secret file somewhere. The options are simply used to get some default markup on the page. Whether or not this is practical is purely subjective!
Quite late but might be useful for someone with the same question. Partial views are helpful in a scenario where you want to load a view based on some user selection.
For instance, let's assume there is a dropdown in parent view displaying three operations that the user can perform. Based on the user selection, a partial view can be loaded into the parent view instead of keeping hidden DIVs in the parent view itself, thus making the parent view light. This will be very useful when we have multiple such user selections based DIVs