Beginning ASP.NET 4: in C# and VB

INTRODUCTION

To build effective and attractive database-driven web sites, you need two things: a solid and fast framework to run your web pages on and a rich and extensive environment to create and program these web pages. With ASP.NET 4 and Visual Web Developer 2010 you get both. Together they form the platform to create dynamic and interactive web sites.

ASP.NET 4 builds on top of its popular predecessors ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 3.5. While maintaining backward compatibility with sites built using these older versions, ASP.NET 4 and Visual Web Developer 2010 introduce new, exciting features and bring many smaller, but much needed changes to the framework and development tools.

With each new release of Visual Studio (which includes Visual Web Developer) since Visual Studio 2003, I am surprised by the sheer amount of new functionality and changes Microsoft has been able to put in the product. Visual Studio 2010 is no exception. A major new feature in Visual Studio 2010 is the full integration of the ADO.NET Entity Framework 4 that lets you work with databases with very little code. Another great change in Visual Studio is the use of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) for the User Interface which brings a better user experience and new behavior in Visual Studio itself.

Although not a new feature by itself, the inclusion of jQuery in Visual Web Developer is an excellent decision that will help you write fancier web sites in less time. jQuery is a compelling client side, cross-browser ...