Summary
Today, virtually all websites contain dynamic web pages of one kind or another. Any website that allows a user to search its content, order products, or customize the site's content is dynamic in nature. A number of competing technologies exist for creating dynamic pages—one of the best is ASP.NET.
Throughout this book we'll be examining how to create interactive and interesting ASP.NET pages. You will implement the examples using Visual Web Developer, a free editor from Microsoft designed specifically for working on ASP.NET websites. In the "Installing the .NET Framework, Visual Web Developer, and SQL Server 2008" section, we looked at how to install Visual Web Developer, along with the .NET Framework and SQL Server 2008. In the "A Brief Tour of Visual Web Developer" section, we poked around Visual Web Developer and created our first ASP.NET 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!