Summary

This chapter has been all about beginnings. It's the start of a journey that will turn you into a web developer. Like many things in life, experience counts, so we need to gain that experience, and the only way to do that is actually do things. Yoda put it succinctly in a Star Wars film – "Try not. Do." So in this chapter we've "done". We've taken the first step towards our goal of learning how to create great web applications.

We started with installing the tools we needed – the Microsoft .NET Framework, a database, the Web Matrix development tool, and a whole bunch of documentation. This is exactly the same procedure that experienced web developers run through, so you're already on that journey – doing the things that need doing.

We then examined the Web Matrix itself, having a look at its features, and how you use them. We created a web page, dragged some controls on, and set some properties. Pretty easy stuff, but then most of what you'll be doing in the book starts with that easy stuff; how hard can it be? So, let's get on with it, and start creating some real web pages, that have real content, and allow the user to enter data and interact with them.