Professional Visual Studio 2012

Chapter 21

ASP.NET Web Forms

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• The differences between Web Site and Web Application projects
• Using the HTML and CSS design tools to control the layout of your web pages
• Easily generating highly functional web applications with the server-side web controls
• Adding rich client-side interactions to your web pages with JavaScript and ASP.NET AJAX

When Microsoft released the first version of ASP.NET, one of the most talked-about features was the capability to create a full-blown web application in the same way as you would create a Windows application. The abstractions provided by ASP.NET coupled with the rich tooling support in Visual Studio allowed programmers to quickly develop feature-rich applications that ran over the web in a wholly integrated way.

ASP.NET version 2.0, which was released in 2005, was a major upgrade that included new features such as a provider model for everything from menu navigation to user authentication, more than 50 new server controls, a web portal framework, and built-in website administration, to name but a few. These enhancements made it even easier to build complex web applications in less time.

The last few versions of ASP.NET and Visual Studio have focused on improving the client-side development experience. These include enhancements to the HTML Designer and CSS editing tools; better IntelliSense and debugging support for JavaScript, HTML, and JavaScript snippets; and new project templates.

In this chapter you’ll learn how ...