The Organization of This Book

The book is divided broadly into sections running from basic to more advanced. Part I, Introduction to Web Matrix and ASP.NET, is an overview of what it means to program Web pages, including the fundamental concepts you ll need to know about Web programming. This section also has all the information about what software you need, where to find it, and how to install and configure it.

In Part II, Learning the Basics of Programmed Web Pages, you ll learn to create programmed Web pages using a hands-on approach. Here you ll create various kinds of simple but functional Web pages that provide you with practice. You ll create several slideshows, a page that allows users to customize some features, a random quotations page, and a hit counter.

In Part III, Programming Web Pages with Data, you ll learn to add data access to your Web pages. Data access is essential to many programmable Web pages, and you ll get plenty of practice in how to work with it. We ll revisit some earlier examples to recreate them using data. You ll create some new applications, such as a guestbook and a calendar, and you ll also work with sending e-mail messages from a Web site.

As with any teaching book, the material is provided as examples not everyone wants to create everything that s illustrated in the book. However, I hope that by working with the examples, you ll learn the techniques that they illustrate and be able to apply them to your own sites.