ASP.NET Core utilizes NuGet packages for its dependencies, unlike the monolithic System.Web.dll used in traditional ASP.NET. NuGet packages allow for a more modular and granular approach to including libraries, reducing the size of your application and making it more efficient.

The primary purpose of ASP.NET Core Identity is authentication and authorization. It provides a framework for managing user authentication, user roles, and permissions in ASP.NET Core applications. It helps secure your application by verifying the identity of users and controlling access to resources.

Visual Studio is one of the most commonly used Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) by ASP.NET Core developers. It provides a robust set of tools and features for creating, testing, and deploying ASP.NET Core applications, making it a popular choice in the developer community.

You can extend the default IdentityUser class by creating a new class that inherits from it and adding the desired properties. This allows you to store additional information about the user in the same database table as the IdentityUser, providing a seamless integration with ASP.NET Core Identity.

Serving static files in a web application primarily aims to improve performance. By serving assets like CSS and JavaScript directly to the client's browser, it reduces the server's load and enhances the website's loading speed. This results in a better user experience and improved website performance.

For an ASP.NET Core MVC application to handle incoming HTTP requests and direct them to the appropriate controllers and actions, it must be configured to use the "Routing" middleware. Routing middleware determines how URLs are matched to controller actions, making it a critical part of request handling in MVC applications.

In Razor, you use the @layout directive followed by the path to the layout file to define a consistent page structure across views. This allows you to create a shared layout that can be used for multiple views, ensuring a consistent look and feel for your application.

To display validation errors on an ASP.NET Core registration view, you can use the ValidationMessage tag helper. It's used to show error messages associated with model validation errors and provides a user-friendly way to communicate validation issues to users during the registration process.

For building cross-platform web applications that can run on both Windows and Linux servers, ASP.NET Core is the ideal choice. Unlike ASP.NET Framework, ASP.NET Core is designed to be cross-platform, lightweight, and high-performance, making it suitable for modern, cloud-native applications.

In a route template, optional parameters are defined using curly braces {}. These allow you to specify route parameters that are optional for a particular route, providing flexibility in your URL structure.