Chapter III.4. Building Web Applications
In This Chapter
To help you build Web applications, Microsoft offers a wide array of products. Among them are ASP.NET and Visual Studio, which are used to create enterprise Web sites featuring e-commerce and full-blown Web-based applications. ASP.NET Web sites use server-side code to do many things, from rendering dynamic content to accessing databases.
In addition to these high-end tools, Microsoft offers Web design and development tools for a range of sites and skill levels, all of which support Web design standards, such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), to work together seamlessly. The bigger picture of Microsoft tools looks something like this:
Visual Web Developer — The premiere Microsoft toolset for building ASP.NET Web sites is part of Visual Studio 2008.
Microsoft Expressions — This set of three products (Graphic Designer, Interactive Designer, and Web Designer) targets professionals who design Web sites.
SharePoint Designer — Because this tool for designing SharePoint sites is built on FrontPage (a program for creating HTML-based sites, which Microsoft is phasing out), SharePoint Designer can create the file-based sites of FrontPage. SharePoint Designer supports the limited development of ASP.NET Web sites.
The Microsoft Web design and development products recognize that building Web sites requires specialized skills. The person designing Web site graphics isn't usually the same person who's writing the site's data access procedures.
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