Beginning ASP.NET 4.5.1: in C# and VB

INTRODUCTION

TO BUILD EFFECTIVE AND ATTRACTIVE DATABASE-DRIVEN WEBSITES, 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 4.5.1 and Visual Studio 2013 you get both. Together they form the platform to create dynamic and interactive websites.

ASP.NET 4.5.1 builds on top of its popular predecessors ASP.NET 2.0, 3.5, 4.0, and 4.5. While maintaining backward compatibility with sites built using these older versions, ASP.NET 4.5.1 and Visual Studio 2013 introduce new, exciting features.

You’ll also find many changes — small and large — in both the ASP.NET Framework and Visual Studio. Some of these changes are the inclusion of Entity Framework 6 (discussed in Chapter 14), the introduction of Browser Link discussed in Chapter 18 and the introduction of the Publish Wizard for Web Site Projects, discussed in Chapter 19.

If you haven’t used Visual Studio 2012 with ASP.NET 4.5 yet, you’ll also appreciate the improved CSS and JavaScript editors (discussed in Chapter 3 and Chapter 10, respectively), the inclusion of NuGet (Chapter 11), and the Page Inspector (Chapter 18), all of which were added in VS 2012 that VS 2013 builds on top of.

If you’re familiar with earlier versions of ASP.NET, you’ll be happy to find many small gems in the new version of the framework that will make your life as a developer easier. I mention and discuss these new features throughout this book where ...