Professional Visual Basic® 2010 and .NET 4

Chapter 22. ASP.NET Advanced Features

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER

• The purpose and use of master pages

• Quickly and easily adding navigation to your site

• Securing access to your site with membership and roles

• Adding persistent profiles for users of your site

• Working with the ASP.NET provider model

• Adding richness and interactivity with Microsoft Ajax

ASP.NET is an exciting technology. It enables the creation and delivery of remotely generated applications (Web applications) accessible via a simple browser — a container that many are rather familiar with. The purpose of Web-based applications (in our case, ASP.NET applications) is to deliver only a single instance of the application to the end user over HTTP. This means that the end users viewing your application will always have the latest version at their disposal. Because of this, many companies today are looking at ASP.NET to not only deliver the company's website, but also to deliver some of their latest applications for their employees, partners, and customers.

The last chapter looked at some of the basics of ASP.NET. This chapter continues that exploration, showing you some additional and exciting technologies, including master pages, navigation, personalization, AJAX and more.

MASTER PAGES

Many Web applications are built so that each page of the application has a similar look and feel; and there may be common page elements such as a header, navigation sections, advertisements, footers, and more. Most people prefer uniformity ...