Chapter 1. What's New? Within a few short years, ASP.NET has become one of the favorite tools of web applications developers, and now it's about to undergo its second major upgrade. Microsoft is making major improvements to the product based on feedback from its millions of customers and the company's own experience in developing and deploying web applications. Moreover, the market for web development tools has become increasingly competitive with the rise of open source PHP and Macromedia Flash, both of which have steadily gained market share.
- Controls
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ASP.NET 2.0 ships with several new controls to make the life of a web application developer easier. In ASP.NET 2.0, there are now new controls that help you to perform data access, site navigation, login, and personalization using Web Parts.
- Page Framework
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ASP.NET 2.0 supports some useful additions to its Page framework such as visual inheritance, technically known as Master Pages. Besides Master Pages, ASP.NET 2.0 also supports "theming" through Themes and Skins, allowing you to maintain a consistent look-and-feel for your web sites. Another noteworthy feature in ASP.NET is the improved support for localization, which reduces the amount of work you need to do to internationalize your web applications.
- Services and APIs
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Behind the various new controls in ASP.NET 2.0 lie the foundation services and APIs that do the heavy lifting needed to support the controls. For example, behind the new Login controls you'll find the new collection of Membership APIs, which perform such tasks such as user authentication, registration of new users, etc. Besides using the new controls, you can directly make use of these APIs in code.
Table 1-1 summarizes some of most important new features of ASP.NET 2.0. Table 1-1. Summary of new features in ASP.NET 2.0| Controls | Page Framework | Services and APIs |
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| Data Controls Includes controls that simplify the connection to data sources, as well as the new GridView and DetailsView controls. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 4. | Master Pages Visual page inheritance for Web Forms. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 2. | Membership The core service for user management, such as user creation, deletion, authentication, retrieval of passwords, etc. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 5. | | Login Controls Contains controls that make web site user management and user authentication easy and efficient. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 5. | Themes and Skins Maintain consistent look-and-feel for the entire site by using Skins definitions grouped by themes. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 8. | Role Management Manages the assignment of roles to users, such as add user to role, delete user from role, enquire if user is in role, etc. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 5. | | Web Parts Provides the infrastructure for creating Web Parts. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 3. | Localization Simplify the steps needed to globalize and localize your web applications. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 8. | Site Maps Supports the retrieval of site information, as well as display of site maps. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 2. | | Navigation Controls Contains controls that display site information and menus. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 2. | Compilation Supports dynamic compilation of business logic without the need for explicit recompilation when the code is changed. Also supports automatic generation of Web Services proxy class using WSDL. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 6. | Profile Supports the personalization of Web sites through the Profile object. We will discuss this topic in Chapter 7. | | Additional Standard Controls Contains controls such as ImageMap, FileUpload, MultiView, and TreeView. We will discuss these controls in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. | | |
This chapter starts with a walkthrough of the steps you now follow to create a web application with Visual Studio 2005, and then dives into a few of the coolest new controls and control functionality.
Tip: If the professional editions of Visual Studio 2005 are too expensive for you, try the Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition, a lightweight, easy-to-use, and easy-to-learn development tool focused exclusively on web development. It is primarily targeted at hobbyist developers and students who may find the cost of Visual Studio 2005 prohibitive. At the time of this writing, Microsoft has not yet announced pricing for the Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition but is widely expected to sell this version for a nominal amount.
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