| When I look down, I miss all the good stuff.
And when I look up, I just trip over things.
—Ani DiFranco
When I first heard about ASP.NET at a Microsoft author’s conference over a year ago, I
thought it might just be too good to be true. I can now create Web pages that are based
on compiled code, in one of many very cool, object-oriented languages? I can use real
variables with types and all? I can create server-side components using the .NET
languages that will allow me to encapsulate all kinds of functionality that my applications
need, and I don’t have to worry about deploying COM components? I can use special
validator components to magically test values entered on the client and the server? As I
said, it sounded too good to be true.
In fact, ASP.NET lets you do all that and more. ASP.NET has quite simply changed the
way I build Web applications. While doing some heavy -duty Active Server Pages (ASP)
programming, I always tried to move any functionality I could into the database because
the deployment issues in the database were much easier to deal with than the
deployment issues with ASP files spread over a cluster of machines. I no longer have to
do that, and neither will you!
ASP.NET provides an opportunity for developers currently working with ASP to create
more powerful and scalable Web applications. At the same time, ASP.NET provides
developers who haven’t previously been involved with Web development with a new
opportunity to begin developing Web applications. Because of the two likely audiences
for this book, I don’t assume that all readers will have tremendous experience with Web
development. That said, if you don’t understand HTML at all, you need to make sure you
know at least what’s covered in Appendix B.
Because you can use both Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and C# with ASP.NET, I don’t
focus on one language to the exclusion of the other. A Visual Basic programmer or a
C++ programmer new to ASP.NET should be able to follow the samples. The samples
alternate between Visual Basic .NET and C#. In the few cases in which the programming
language matters, I’ve shown the samples in both languages or, more frequently, pointed
out the differences between the languages. Learning the .NET Framework is the better
part of the work required to learn to use ASP.NET. |
