Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition

Introduction

Simply put, ASP.NET 2.0 is an amazing release! When ASP.NET 1.0 was introduced in 2000, many considered it a revolutionary leap forward in the area of Web application development. We believe ASP.NET 2.0 is just as exciting and revolutionary. Although the foundation of ASP.NET was laid with the release of ASP.NET 1.0, ASP.NET 2.0 builds on this foundation by focusing on the area of developer productivity.

ASP.NET 2.0 brings with it a staggering number of new technologies built into the ASP.NET framework. After reading this book, you will see just how busy the ASP.NET team has been in the past few years. The number of classes inside ASP.NET has more than doubled, and this release contains more than 50 new server controls!

This book covers these new built-in technologies. It not only introduces new topics, it also shows you examples of these new technologies in action. So sit back, pull up that keyboard, and let's have some fun!

What You Need for ASP.NET 2.0

You might find it best to install Visual Studio 2005 to work through the examples in this book; you can, however, just use Microsoft's Notepad and the command-line compilers that come with the .NET Framework 2.0. To work through every example in this book, you need the following:

• Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, or Windows XP

• Visual Studio 2005

• SQL Server 2000 or 2005

• Microsoft Access or SQL Server Express Edition

The nice thing is that you are not required to have Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) to work with ...