Summary

Today virtually all websites contain dynamic web pages of one kind or another. Any site that allows a user to search the site's content, order products, or customize the site's content is dynamic in nature. There are a plethora of technologies for creating dynamic pages, one of the best ones being ASP.NET.

Throughout this book we'll be examining how to create interactive and interesting ASP.NET web pages. You'll be implementing the examples using Visual Web Developer, a free editor from Microsoft designed specifically for working on ASP.NET websites. In the "Installing the ASP.NET Engine, Editor, and Database System" section, we looked at how to install Visual Web Developer, along with the .NET Framework and SQL Server 2005, two additional components that will be needed for the book's examples. Finally, in the "A Brief Tour of Visual Web Developer" section, we poked around Visual Web Developer and created our first ASP.NET web page, testing it through a browser. In Hour 3 we'll explore the Visual Web Developer environment in much greater detail.

We have just begun our foray into the world of ASP.NET. Over the next 23 hours we'll explore the ins and outs of this exciting technology, culminating in the creation of a fully functional online photo album application.