This is an introductory book on creating ASP.NET Web applications using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. The focus of this book is the Visual Studio .NET development environment. You will learn how to take full advantage of the features of the Visual Studio .NET development environment to quickly develop professional Web applications.
The material in this book is organized around step-by-step walkthroughs of common programming tasks that you'll encounter when building Web applications. Each walkthrough was written to be detailed enough to stand on its own.
Each and every code sample in this book is presented in both C# and Visual Basic .NET. These are the two languages supported by Visual Studio .NET that are widely used when building Web applications. No preference is given to one language over another.
Visual Studio .NET is the premier development environment for creating .NET applications. The environment includes specialized tools for working with databases, XML files, and XML Web services. Building applications with Visual Studio .NET is a very different experience than building ASP.NET applications with a standard text editor. Visual Studio .NET performs a lot of invisible work in the background, and the environment makes a number of assumptions about the best way to build applications. It is difficult for even an experienced ASP.NET developer to use Visual Studio .NET effectively without any guidance. This book helps readers understand and begin using this complicated environment.
About the Author
Stephen Walther—through his training company Superexpert AspWorkshops (www.AspWorkshops.com)—has taught workshops on building Web applications using Visual Studio .NET at NASA, Lockheed Martin, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. House of Representatives, Verizon, and others.
He is the author of the book ASP.NET Unleashed and a contributing author to ASP.NET Tips, Tutorials, and Code.
He got his start working with Active Server Pages by developing two large commercial Web sites. First, he created the Collegescape Web site, a Web site used by more than 200 colleges—including Harvard, Stanford, and M.I.T.—to accept online college applications (Collegescape was bought out by Petersons). Next, he created the CityAuction Web site, an auction site used by both Snap! and CitySearch (CityAuction was acquired by CitySearch).
He received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Berkeley. He was a Ph.D. candidate in Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he became involved with the World Wide Web.
