This book will help you figure out how to write Web applications using Microsoft's most current version of its HTTP request processing framework—ASP.NET 2.0. Web development has come a long way since the earliest sites began popping up in the early 1990s. The world of Web development offers several different choices as far as development tools go. Over the past few years, ASP.NET has evolved to become one of the most consistent, stable, and feature-rich frameworks available for managing HTTP requests.

ASP.NET together with Visual Studio include a number of features to make your life as a Web developer easier. For example, Visual Studio starts you off with several very useful project templates from which to develop your site. Visual Studio also supports a number of development modes, including using Internet Information Services directly to test your site during development, using a built-in Web server, or developing your site over an FTP connection. The debugger in Visual Studio lets you run the site and step through the critical areas of your code to find problems. The Visual Studio designer enables effective user interface development, allowing you to drop control elements onto a canvas to see how they appear visually. These are but a few of the features built into the ASP.NET framework when paired with Visual Studio.

While ASP.NET and Visual Studio offer excellent tools for writing Web applications, Web development on the Microsoft platform hasn't always been this way. The road to ASP.NET 2.0 has been nearly a decade in the making.