This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to build rich and
interactive web sites that run on the Microsoft platform. With the
knowledge you gain from this book, you create a great foundation to
build any type of web site, ranging from simple hobby-related web
sites to sites you may be creating for commercial purposes.
Anyone new to web programming should be able to follow along
because no prior background in web development is assumed. The book
starts at the very beginning of web development by showing you how
to obtain and install Visual Web Developer. The chapters that
follow gradually introduce you to new technologies, building on top
of the knowledge gained in the previous chapters.
Do you have a strong preference for Visual Basic over C# or the
other way around? Or do you think both languages are equally cool?
Or maybe you haven''t made up your mind yet and want to learn both
languages? Either way, you''ll like this book because all
code examples are presented in both languages!
Even if you''re already familiar with previous versions of
ASP.NET, with the 1.x versions in particular, you may gain
a lot from this book. Although many concepts from ASP.NET 2.0 are
brought forward into ASP.NET 3.5, you''ll discover there''s a host
of new stuff to be found in this book, including an introduction to
LINQ, the new CSS and JavaScript debugging tools, new ASP.NET
controls, and integrated support for ASP.NET Ajax.
To build effective and attractive database-driven web sites, you
need two things: a solid and fast framework to run your web pages
on and a rich and extensive environment to create and program these
web pages. With ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Web Developer 2008 you get
both. Together they form the platform to create dynamic
and interactive web applications.
ASP.NET 3.5 builds on top of its popular predecessor ASP.NET
2.0. While maintaining backward compatibility with sites built
using this older version, the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 in
general and ASP.NET 3.5 in particular add a lot of new, compelling
features to the mix.
Continuing the path of "less code" that was entered with the 2.0
version of the .NET Framework, ASP.NET 3.5 lets you accomplish more
with even less code. New features like LINQ that are added to the
.NET Framework allow you to access a database with little to no
hand written code. The integration of Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax into
the ASP.NET Framework and Visual Web Developer means you can now
create fast responding and spiffy web interfaces simply by dragging
a few controls onto your page and setting a few properties. This
book gives you an in-depth look at both these technologies.
The support for cascading style sheets (CSS), the language to
lay out and format web pages, has undergone a major overhaul in
Visual Web Developer. The design time support, that shows you how a
page will eventually look in the browser, has been vastly improved.
Additionally, Visual Web Developer now ships with a lot of tools
that make writing CSS a breeze.
However, drag-and-drop support and visual tools are not the only
things you''ll learn from this book. ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Web
Developer 2008 come with a great and extensive set of tools to help
you program your web applications. These tools range from the new
LINQ syntax that allows you to query data and databases in your web
applications, to the vastly improved debugging capabilities that
allow you to debug your application from client-side JavaScript all
the way up into your server-side code, all with the same familiar
user interface, commands, and actions.
Under the hood, ASP.NET 3.5 makes use of the same run-time as
version 2.0. This ensures a great backward compatibility with that
version, which means that ASP.NET 2.0 applications continue to run
under the new framework. But don''t be fooled by the fact that the
run-time hasn''t changed. Although the technical underpinnings
needed to execute your web application haven''t changed, the .NET
3.5 Framework and ASP.NET add a lot of new features, as
you''ll discover in this book.
Probably the best thing of Visual Web Developer 2008 is its
price: it''s available for free. Although the commercial versions
of Visual Studio 2008 ship with Visual Web Developer, you can also
download and install the free Express Edition. This makes Visual
Web Developer 2008 and ASP.NET 3.5 probably the most attractive and
compelling web development technologies available today.
This book teaches you how to create a feature-rich, data-driven,
and interactive web site. Although this is quite a mouthful,
you''ll find that with Visual Web Developer 2008 this isn't as hard
as it seems. You''ll see the entire process of building a web site,
from installing Visual Web Developer 2008 in Chapter 1 all the way
up to putting your web application on a live server in Chapter 18.
The book is divided into 18 chapters, each dealing with a specific
subject.
Chapter 1, "Getting Started With ASP.NET 3.5."
In this chapter you''ll see how to obtain and install Visual Web
Developer 2008. You''ll get instructions for downloading and
installing the free edition of Visual Web Developer 2008, called
the Express Edition. You are also introduced to HTML, the language
behind every web page. The chapter closes with an overview of the
customization options that Visual Web Developer gives you.
Chapter 2, "Building an ASP.NET Web Site." This
chapter shows you how to create a new web site and how to add new
elements like pages to it. Besides learning how to create a
well-structured site, you also see how to use the numerous tools in
Visual Web Developer to create HTML and ASP.NET pages.
Chapter 3, "Designing Your Web Pages." Visual
Web Developer comes with a host of tools that allow you to create
well-designed and attractive web pages. In this chapter, you see
how to make good use of these tools. Additionally, you learn about
CSS, the language that is used to format web pages.
Chapter 4, "Working with ASP.NET Controls."
ASP.NET Server controls are one of the most important concepts in
ASP.NET. They allow you to create complex and feature-rich web
sites with very little code. This chapter introduces you to the
large number of server controls that are available, explains what
they are used for, and shows you how to use them.
Chapter 5, "Programming Your ASP.NET Web
Pages." Although the built-in CSS tools and the ASP.NET
server controls can get you a long way in creating web pages, you
are likely to use a programming language to enhance your pages.
This chapter serves as an introduction to programming with a strong
focus on programming web pages. Best of all: all the examples you
see in this chapter (and the rest of the book) are in both Visual
Basic and C#, so you can choose the language you like best.
Chapter 6, "Creating Consistent Looking Web
Sites." Consistency is important to give your web site an
attractive and professional appeal. ASP.NET helps you create
consistent-looking pages through the use of master pages, which
allow you to define the global look and feel of a page. Skins and
themes help you to centralize the looks of controls and other
visual elements in your site. You also see how to create a base
page that helps to centralize programming code that you need on all
pages in your site.
Chapter 7, "Navigation." To help your visitors
find their way around your site, ASP.NET comes with a number of
navigation controls. These controls are used to build the
navigation structure of your site. They can be connected to your
site''s central site map that defines the pages in your web site.
You also learn how to programmatically send users from one page to
another.
Chapter 8, "User Controls." User Controls are
reusable page fragments that can be used in multiple web pages. As
such, they are great for repeating content like menus, banners, and
so on. In this chapter, you learn how to create and use User
Controls and enhance them with some programmatic intelligence.
Chapter 9, "Validating User Input." A large
part of interactivity in your site is defined by the input of your
users. This chapter shows you how to accept, validate, and process
user input using ASP.NET server controls. Additionally, you see how
to send e-mail from your ASP.NET web application and how to read
from text files.
Chapter 10, "ASP.NET Ajax." Microsoft ASP.NET
Ajax allows you to create good looking, flicker free web pages that
close the gap between traditional desktop applications and web
applications. In this chapter you learn how to use the built-in
Ajax features to enhance the presence of your web pages, resulting
in a smoother interaction with the web site.
Chapter 11, "Introduction to Databases."
Understanding how to use databases is critical to building modern
web sites, as most modern web sites require the use of a database.
You''ll learn the basics of SQL, the query language that allows you
to access and alter data in a database. In addition, you are
introduced to the database tools found in Visual Web Developer that
help you create and manage your SQL Server databases.
Chapter 12, "Displaying and Updating Data."
Building on the knowledge you gained in the previous chapter, this
chapter shows you how to use the ASP.NET data-bound and data source
controls to create a rich interface that enables your users to
interact with the data in the database that these controls
target.
Chapter 13, "LINQ." LINQ is Microsoft''s new
solution for accessing objects, databases, XML, and more. In this
chapter you''ll see how to use LINQ to SQL to access SQL Server
databases. Instead of writing a lot of manual code, you create a
bunch of LINQ objects that do the heavy work for you. This chapter
shows you what LINQ is all about, how to use the visual LINQ
designer built into Visual Web Developer, and how to write LINQ
queries to get data in and out of your SQL Server database.
Chapter 14, "Presenting Data: Advanced Topics."
While earlier chapters focused mostly on the technical foundations
of working with data, this chapter looks at the same topic from a
front-end perspective. You see how to change the visual appearance
of your data through the use of control styles. You also see how to
interact with the data-bound controls and how to speed up your
application by keeping a local copy of frequently accessed
data.
Chapter 15, "Security in Your ASP.NET 3.5 Web
Site." Although presented quite late in the book, security
is a first-class, important topic. This chapter shows you how to
make use of the built-in ASP.NET features related to security. You
learn about a number of application services that facilitate
security. You also learn about how to let users sign up for an
account on your web site, how to distinguish between anonymous and
logged on users, and how to manage the users in your system.
Chapter 16, "Personalizing Web Sites." Building
on the security features introduced in Chapter 15, this chapter
shows you how to create personalized web pages with content
targeted at individual users. You see how to configure and use the
ASP.NET Profile that enables you to store personalized data for
known and anonymous visitors.
Chapter 17, "Exception Handling, Debugging, and
Tracing." In order to understand, improve, and fix the
code you write for your ASP.NET web pages you need good debugging
tools. Visual Web Developer ships with great debugging support that
enables you diagnose to the state of your application at run-time,
helping you to find and fix problems before your users do.
Chapter 18, "Deploying Your Web Site." By the
end of the book, you should have a web site that is ready to be
shown to the world. But how exactly do you do that? What are the
things you need to know and understand to put your web site out in
the wild? This chapter gives the answers and provides you with a
good look at configuring different production systems in order to
run your final web site.