What You Need to Use This Book

I am assuming that you are somewhat familiar with how ASP.NET works in principle, and so in this book I have concentrated on the new features in ASP.NET 2.0. Also, the code examples in this book are all written in Visual Basic 2005, so you should be well versed in Visual Basic to take advantage of this book. If you are a C# programmer, converting the examples from VB to C# should not take too much effort. For this task, I suggest you take a look at C# and VB.NET Conversion Pocket Reference by Jose Mojica, published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

You'll want a computer with a version of Visual Studio 2005 installed that supports Visual Basic, along with some form of SQL Server (SQL Server Express is fine).

You can also do the labs in this book using the new Visual Studio Express Editions. Specifically, you'll need Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.