Prologue

Greetings! You just entered the world of ASP.NET 3.5 For Beginner. In case you weren’t told on the way in, ASP.NET is Microsoft’s technology for building dynamic, interactive, data-driven Web pages. The primary tool for creating ASP.NET sites is Visual Web Developer (VWD), which you use throughout this blog. Wait a minute! An introduction to an introduction is not only wordy and redundant, it’s superfluous and unnecessary.

Here’s what I assume about you, gentle reader:

• You use a computer and know your way around Windows XP or Windows Vista.
  
• You’re familiar with the World Wide Web and can connect to the Internet.
  
• You’ve created a Web page in a tool like FrontPage or Dreamweaver and probably know some HTML markup.
  
• You grasp basic programming concepts. The terms variable and loop don’t frighten you — but you aren’t necessarily a programmer.

You may have any number of reasons for digging into this ASP.NET blog:

• You volunteered to create a statistics Web site for your kid’s soccer league.
• You’re putting your home-based business on the Web and need a data-driven page.
• You develop Web sites on platforms like Java and PHP and want to make yourself more marketable by including Microsoft’s technology.
• You’ve worked with a previous release of ASP.NET and want to get up to speed on new stuff like AJAX, LINQ, and the ListView control.
• Your boss is dabbling in ASP.NET and might let you play in his sandbox if you talk a good enough game.
• You collect For Beginner blogs and master each blog’s subject before moving to the next one.

Less Code, More Productivity

When I agreed to write a blog from scratch on ASP.NET 3.5, I made it clear that I wanted it to be very hands-on and task-oriented. I show you how to use Microsoft’s latest graphical tools — designers, editors, and wizards — to their best advantage. Instead of treating new features like AJAX and LINQ as separate add-ons, I integrate them into many samples.

Some professional developers would have you believe that the only effective way to create ASP.NET pages is to write the code by hand. (Do the words real men and quiche ring a bell here?) Their geeky noses have been stuck to the keyboard for so long they’ve been left behind. Microsoft has implemented powerful design-time tools in Visual Web Developer, so why not use them to be more productive? Wherever possible, I favor the drag, drop, choose, and configure methods over typing code. Here’s why:

It’s faster. You don’t have to know — or even understand — the ins and outs of every object before creating something useful. You create fewer bugs. Microsoft’s built-in designers write quality code based on your choices. Pages are easier to maintain. Programmers are notorious for failing to document what their code performs and many insist that code is “self-documenting.” When you revise someone else’s code by rerunning a wizard, you spend less time playing catch-up.

That said, in many instances in this blog, you do write code. Each time, I explain what the code is performing. Don’t fear being overwhelmed if you’re not a code jockey. Everyone’s a beginner at some point.
The blog’s code examples are in Visual Basic .NET because Visual Basic is easy to understand, not case-sensitive, and just as powerful as C# when compiled. (Not to mention that I like VB best!)

People have different learning styles. Many are adventurers who turn to manuals only to get out of trouble. They barge into a new programming task like a deer into the forest until some grimy detail stops them in their tracks. Suddenly, progress can’t be made until they find an example or fill a knowledge gap. That’s when they scout out a likely topic in the blog’s index, follow a few numbered steps, and snatch a snippet of “just-in-time” information. In contrast to the adventurers, you might be the organized and methodical type. Perhaps you prefer to get a feel for the subject, ease into it, and analyze examples while you’re building skill and confidence. This blog accommodates both approaches by including multiple hooks and starting points.