Preface

I've been teaching ASP.NET for more than two years and things have changed. It's not just the course material that's changed, but more importantly it's the ability of my students to be extremely productive. They can create enterprise applications in a fraction of the time it used to take. Many of my students are seasoned Web developers who work for Fortune 1000 companies. They have taken what they've learned back to the workplace, and saved their employers thousands of dollars. And the savings have been possible because the cost of developing enterprise applications with ASP.NET is so much lower. That's because ASP.NET gives developers so much of the plumbing that they used to have to write themselves, such as Web services, XML rendering, and remoting.

This book should not be the first book on ASP.NET development that you read. While there is a fair amount of teaching throughout, it assumes that you know the basics of Web development using ASP.NET. This book is full of solutions that can be easily added to your Web site. The solutions also show you lots of recommended practices. Learning these recommended practices is the next step past learning the basics of ASP.NET that you need. It's kind of like once you've learned to spell and write sentences, you can correctly learn to craft coherent prose. This book teaches you how to tie all of the ASP.NET pieces together. It teaches you how to get the most out of the ASP.NET platform.

Many of the applications in this book would cost you significant dollars if you purchased them. Examples of this are the Forum application, the Classifieds application, and the Graphing class. As a developer, I often look for applications and classes that I can use. Finding these cuts my cost of development significantly since I don't have to write them myself. And even if you do have to modify these applications to suit your needs, they give you a starting point that'll still save you lots of time.

I have a Web site so that you can see the applications. The Web site is at www.ASPNET-Solutions.com. Besides giving you the opportunity to see the applications in action, this Web site offers updates. If for some reason I find bugs or make modifications, I'll post them on the Web site. There's a forum on the Web site, too, where you can ask questions and make comments.

You can also contact me directly via e-mail at [e-mail]. I can usually answer your questions within several days. There are times, though, when I'm in the final stages of a project when it might take me as long as a week to answer your e-mail. Be patient and I'll respond as soon as possible. I also welcome questions that go beyond the material in the book if you have a related question in your own development, please ask and I'll try to get you an answer.