Chapter 1. What’s New?
Within a few short years, ASP.NET has become one of the favorite tools of web applications developers, and now it’s about to undergo its second major upgrade. Microsoft is making major improvements to the product based on feedback from its millions of customers and the company’s own experience in developing and deploying web applications. Moreover, the market for web development tools has become increasingly competitive with the rise of open source PHP and Macromedia Flash, both of which have steadily gained market share.
- Controls
ASP.NET 2.0 ships with several new controls to make the life of a web application developer easier. In ASP.NET 2.0, there are now new controls that help you to perform data access, site navigation, login, and personalization using Web Parts.
- Page Framework
ASP.NET 2.0 supports some useful additions to its Page framework such as visual inheritance, technically known as Master Pages. Besides Master Pages, ASP.NET 2.0 also supports “theming” through Themes and Skins, allowing you to maintain a consistent look-and-feel for your web sites. Another noteworthy feature in ASP.NET is the improved support for localization, which reduces the amount of work you need to do to internationalize your web applications.
- Services and APIs
Behind the various new controls in ASP.NET 2.0 lie the foundation services and APIs that do the heavy lifting needed to support the controls. For example, behind the new Login controls you’ll find the new collection of ...