How This Book Is Organized

Although I encourage you to read this book from start to finish, reading chapter by chapter, I realize that not everyone has time to do so. If necessary, you can use this book solely as a reference and jump to a chapter only when the need arises. It might be helpful, therefore, to have an idea of the overall organization of this book.

• Part I: Working with ASP.NET Web Forms ” The chapters in this part provide you with detailed information on building ASP.NET pages with form and validation controls. All the controls used for constructing interactive HTML forms are discussed.

• Part II: Advanced ASP.NET Page Development ” These chapters discuss how to create your own controls with user controls, how to use mobile controls to create Web pages that work with cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), how to divide the code from the design content on a page, and how to use third-party controls in your ASP.NET pages.

• Part III: Working with ADO.NET ” The chapters in this part provide you with a detailed understanding of ADO.NET. You learn how to perform basic database tasks , such as saving form data to a database. You also learn how to use the specialized database Web controls, such as the DataList and DataGrid controls.

• Part IV: Working with ASP.NET Applications ” These chapters discuss features of an ASP.NET application. For example, you learn how to configure your ASP.NET application with the Web.config file and work with both application and session state.

• Part V: Securing ASP.NET Applications ” These chapters provide you with an overview of the security features built into ASP.NET. For example, you learn how to use form-based security to password-protect pages on your site. You also learn how to use the .NET classes for performing encryption.

• Part VI: Building ASP.NET Web Services ” The chapters in this part explain how to use an exciting new technology included with this release of Active Server Pages. In these chapters, you learn how to create Web Services and integrate the Web Services into your Web site.

• Part VII: Leveraging the .NET Framework ” These chapters discuss many of the useful .NET classes that you can use in your pages. For example, you learn how to generate images on-the-fly , work with collections and regular expressions, and send e-mail from an ASP.NET page.

• Part VIII: Building Custom ASP.NET Controls ” These chapters discuss how you can extend the ASP.NET Framework with custom controls. You learn how to create your own ASP.NET controls.

• Part IX: Sample ASP.NET Applications ” The final part of this book contains two complete sample applications. You learn how to build a job site and an online store.