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Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0

With the release of ASP.NET 1.0, Microsoft revolutionized web application development by pro-

viding a rich set of features aimed at increasing the productivity of developers. Now with

ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft has raised the bar to a much higher level by providing excellent out-of-the-

box features that are not only geared toward increasing the productivity of developers but also

toward simplifying the administration and management of ASP.NET 2.0 applications. These new

features, combined with the increased speed and performance of ASP.NET 2.0, arm developers

with a powerful platform that can make a significant impact on the way web applications are

developed, deployed, and maintained.

This chapter takes a quick tour of the new ASP.NET 2.0 features. Specifically, this chapter will dis-

cuss the features of this new, improved platform that will help you in designing, developing, and

deploying enterprise-class web applications.

ASP.NET 2.0 Features

If you have worked with ASP.NET 1.x versions, you will undoubtedly agree that it was a great prod-

uct that provided huge improvements in the way web applications were designed and deployed. If

ASP.NET 1.x was a great product, then what’s wrong with it? Well, nothing, actually, but when devel-

oping software, there is always a trade-off between how much can be done, how many resources you

have, and how much time you have to do it. There is an almost never-ending supply of features you

can add, but at some stage you have to ship the product. You cannot doubt that ASP.NET 1.0 shipped

with an impressive array of features, but the ASP.NET team members are ambitious, and they not only

had plans of their own but also listened to their users. ASP.NET 2.0 addresses the areas that both the

development team and users wanted to improve. The aims of the new version are:

❑ Reduce the number of lines of code required by 70%: The declarative programming

model freed developers from having to write reams of code, but there are still many sce-

narios where this cannot be avoided. Data access is a great example, where the same

Connection,

DataAdapter/DataSet, and Command/DataReader code is used regularly.

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COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL

Summary of content (22 pages)

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AL MA TE RI Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 GH TE D With the release of ASP.NET 1.0, Microsoft revolutionized web application development by providing a rich set of features aimed at increasing the productivity of developers. Now with ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft has raised the bar to a much higher level by providing excellent out-of-thebox features that are not only geared toward increasing the productivity of developers but also toward simplifying the administration and management of ASP.NET 2.
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Part I: Introduction ❑ Increase developer productivity: This partly relates to reducing the amount of code required, but is also affected by more server controls encompassing complex functionality, as well as providing better solutions for common web site scenarios (such as portals and personalized sites). ❑ Provide the fastest web server platform: Although ASP.NET 1.x offered a fast server platform, ASP.NET 2.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 Using these features, you can spend your time building richer, more fully featured applications by leveraging the new controls and infrastructure services built into the core platform, as opposed to writing a lot of infrastructure code as is the case with ASP.NET 1.x. For example, ASP.NET 2.0 now includes builtin support for membership (username/password credential storage) and role management services out of the box.
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Part I: Introduction Listing 1-1: (continued) Master Page
Master Page Content

Apart from looking at the file extension, you can also identify a master file by looking at the new page directive named master at the top of the page.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0
The code-behind file referenced by HelloWorld.aspx file is HelloWorld.aspx.cs, which is defined as follows: using System; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; public partial class HelloWorld : System.Web.UI.
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Part I: Introduction Control Category Controls Login controls Login, LoginName, LoginStatus, LoginView, CreateUser Wizard, ChangePassword, PasswordRecovery Navigation controls Menu, TreeView, SiteMapPath Web Parts controls WebPartManager, WebPartZone, CatalogZone, EditorZone, ConnectionsZone, DeclarativeCatalogPart, PageCatalogPart, ImportCatalogPart, AppearanceEditorPart, Behavior EditorPart, LayoutEditorPart, PropertyGridEditorPart Other controls BulletedList, FileUpload, HiddenField, ImageMap, W
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 Now that you have had a look at the data source controls supplied with ASP.NET 2.0, this section will examine the data-bound controls that you will normally use to display data that is contained in the data source controls. These data-bound controls bind data automatically. One of the neat things about data-bound controls is that the development environment automatically guides developers through the process of binding a data control to a data source.
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Part I: Introduction Listing 1-2: (continued)

The code declares a SqlDataSource control and a GridView control.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 ❑ ❑ : Provides various login views depending on the selected template : Provides the web site administrators with the capability to email the users their lost password The login controls described here abstract most of the common tasks for which developers have to manually write code for a secured web site. Although this could be achieved in ASP.NET 1.x, you still had to add controls manually and write code.
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Part I: Introduction page. For example, you can create a web page that contains login and password text boxes for registered end users, and another set of controls for new end users to register with the web site. In this case, you can use the validation group property to perform different actions, such as logging on to the web site and registering an end user. Themes One of the neat features of ASP.NET 2.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 ❑ Customization themes override control definitions, thus changing the look and feel of controls. Customization themes are applied with the Theme attribute of the Page directive. ❑ Stylesheet themes don’t override control definitions, thus allowing the control to use the theme properties or override them. Stylesheet themes are applied with the StylesheetTheme attribute of the Page directive.
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Part I: Introduction By taking advantage of Web Parts, you, as a developer, can empower your users with the ability to perform the following operations. ❑ Users can personalize page content. ❑ Users can personalize the page layout by allowing the users to drag Web Parts from one zone to another zone, or change its appearance, look and feel, and so on. ❑ Users can also export and import Web Part controls so the Web Parts can be effectively shared among other sites.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 To start with, you declare a WebPartManager control. The WebPartManager control is a must for any ASP.NET page that utilizes Web Parts. This control must be the first element in an ASP.NET web form, above all other Web Parts, zones, or any other custom or specialized Web Part controls.
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Part I: Introduction Now with the introduction of ASP.NET 2.0 personalization, all of the above complexities are handled by the personalization framework itself. In ASP.NET personalization, information about a specific user is stored in a persistent format. Also, ASP.NET personalization allows you to easily manage user information without requiring you to create and maintain your own database.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 Tag Navigator Visual Studio 2005 comes with a new Tag Navigator feature that enables developers to easily track their location in a HTML document, thereby providing excellent navigation support. The Tag Navigator displays the current path within the source of an HTML page by displaying a list of all the HTML tags that contain the tag where your cursor is currently located.
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Part I: Introduction Figure 1-3 As you can see from Figure 1-3, you have the following options when creating web projects: ❑ File System Support: With Visual Studio 2005, you now have the option of creating a new web application within any folder on your computer. Note that neither IIS nor Front Page Server Extensions is required to be installed on your computer. You can simply point the web application to a specific folder and start building web pages. This is made possible through the new built-in ASP.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 enables users to programmatically build programs or scripts that create, read, and update configuration files such as Web.config and machine.config. In addition, there is a new comprehensive admin tool that plugs into the existing IIS Administration MMC, enabling an administrator to graphically read or change any setting within the configuration files. ASP.NET 2.
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Part I: Introduction known as precompilation, using which you can compile an ASP.NET web site before making the web site available to users. Precompilation also allows you to catch all the compilation errors before deploying the application onto the production servers. ASP.NET 2.0 provides the following two options for precompiling a site: ❑ In-place precompilation: When you perform in-place precompilation, all ASP.NET files are compiled and stored in a special folder.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 allows developers to aggressively output cache database-driven page and partial page content within a site, and have ASP.NET automatically invalidate these cache entries and refresh the content whenever the back-end database changes. ASP .NET 2.0 also introduces the Substitution control, which allows you to link dynamic and cached content in a web page. Caching with the DataSource Controls The DataSource controls enable you to cache database data while connecting a .
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Part I: Introduction Using the Substitution Control ASP.NET 2.0 provides a new control called the Substitution control, which enables you to insert dynamic content into a cached web page. For example, you can display the name of an end user, which is dynamically generated in a cached web page containing some text or images. The Substitution control provides a property called MethodName, which represents the method called to return the dynamic content.
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Chapter 1: Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 Summar y This chapter has provided you with a quick tour of the features of ASP.NET 2.0. Specifically, this chapter discussed the number of new productivity enhancements of ASP.NET 2.0 that are exciting for the developers. In addition, this chapter has also discussed the configuration and management of ASP.NET web applications, as well as the performance improvement features. Apart from the features discussed so far, ASP.NET 2.
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