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To be a successful ASP.NET 4 developer, you need to know how to apply the vast array of new functionality available in the latest release of the .NET 4 Framework and Visual Studio 2010.

This book will immerse you in a variety of advanced topics, including architecting different application data tiers, memory caching paradigms, data mining, and search engine optimization. Working through step-by-step exercises using P/LINQ, DLR, MEF, MVC, IronPython, Axum, and Ajax, you will learn a variety of approaches to building each of the key application tiers common to all web solutions.

Using a proven technique of illustrating advanced concepts with functional solutions, all topics in the book are modeled on a fully operational content management system (CMS), built from the ground up. This ensures that you’ll be introduced to real-world examples that demonstrate the full functionality of the .NET 4 Framework for ASP.NET, and that you’ll be able to apply your new skills to any web development situation.

DVD includes Visual Web Developer 2010 Express and ASP.NET 4

In just 24 sessions of one hour or less, you’ll learn how to build complete, professional-quality web solutions with ASP.NET 4 and Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010. Using this book’s straightforward, step-by-step approach, you’ll master the entire process, from site design through data collection, user management through debugging and deployment. Scott Mitchell, editor of top ASP.NET resource site 4GuysFromRolla.com, shows how to use the newest ASP.NET 4 enhancements and make the most of free tools like ASP.NET Ajax and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition. Each lesson builds on what you’ve already learned, giving you a strong, practical foundation for success!

Step-by-step instructions carefully walk you through the most common ASP.NET 4 development tasks.

Quizzes and Exercises at the end of each chapter help you test your knowledge.

By the Way, Did You Know?, and Watch Out! boxes point out shortcuts and solutions.

Learn how to…

• Get started fast with ASP.NET 4 and Visual Web Developer 2010
• Use Visual Web Developer 2010 to quickly build professional-quality ASP.NET websites
• Design, create, and test ASP.NET web pages
• Collect, process, and validate input from your site’s visitors
• Build a website that supports user accounts
• Create web pages that access, display, and edit database data using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition
• Define site maps to provide efficient, easy navigation
• Use master pages to build more consistent and well-designed sites
• Create more responsive and interactive web pages with ASP.NET Ajax
• Host, upload, deploy, and update production web sites

The most comprehensive book on Microsoft’s new ASP.NET 4, ASP.NET 4 Unleashed covers all facets of ASP.NET development. Led by Microsoft ASP.NET program manager Stephen Walther, an expert author team thoroughly covers the entire platform.

The authors first introduce the ASP.NET Framework’s basic controls and show how to create common site-wide layouts and styles. Next, they cover all aspects of accessing, presenting, organizing, and editing data. You’ll find thorough and practical sections on building custom components and controls, providing effective site navigation, securing sites and applications, and much more. This book presents hundreds of realistic code examples, reflecting the authors’ unsurpassed experience with ASP.NET both inside and outside Microsoft.

• Build interactive Web Forms, validate form data, and upload files
• Provide interactive calendars, wizards, site maps, and other valuable features
• Design efficient, maintainable sites with Master Pages and Themes
• Build data-driven applications with database controls, ADO.NET data access components, QueryExtender, LINQ to SQL, and WCF Data Services
• Generate charts on the fly with the new Chart Control
• Extend ASP.NET with custom controls and reusable components
• Create site registration and authentication systems that store membership data in SQL Server or Active Directory
• Use URL Routing to build dynamism, flexibility, readability, and SEO-friendliness into your URLs
• Improve performance and scalability with caching and preloading
• Maintain state with cookies, cookieless session state, and profiles
• Localize, configure, package, and deploy ASP.NET applications
• Use the ASP.NET MVC Framework to improve agility, testability, speed to market, and extensibility
• Retrofit existing ASP.NET applications with Ajax and build pure client-side Ajax web applications
• Construct a complete ASP.NET 4 website from start to finish

With Programming ASP.NET 3.5, you'll quickly learn to create state-of-the-art applications using Microsoft's popular web development technology and Visual Studio 2008. This updated bestseller provides comprehensive and easy-to-understand information to help you use several .NET 3.5 technologies for faster development and better web application performance-including ASP.NET AJAX for interactive user interfaces, LINQ for data access, and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) for web services.
Programming ASP.NET 3.5 includes examples and sample code that let you explore development with ASP.NET in more depth. With this book, you will:

• Learn about AJAX and ASP.NET server controls included with Visual Studio 2008
• Discover how to use the DataSource and data-bound controls in ADO.NET
• Use the new LINQ API and learn how to make use of it within ASP.NET pages
• Create a uniform look and feel throughout your application with Master Pages
• Use navigation controls to build site maps, menus, and breadcrumbs quickly and easily
• Build and use various web services with WCF
• Detect errors during development and handle them in your production code
• Learn how to configure and deploy your website

Written by Microsoft technology experts Jesse Liberty, Dan Hurwitz, and Dan Maharry, Programming ASP.NET 3.5 is the best book for learning how to build dynamic, interactive web applications using Microsoft's latest technologies.

Programmers: protect and defend your Web apps against attack!

You may know ASP.NET, but if you don't understand how to secure your applications, you need this book. This vital guide explores the often-overlooked topic of teaching programmers how to design ASP.NET Web applications so as to prevent online thefts and security breaches.

You'll start with a thorough look at ASP.NET 3.5 basics and see happens when you don't implement security, including some amazing examples. The book then delves into the development of a Web application, walking you through the vulnerable points at every phase. Learn to factor security in from the ground up, discover a wealth of tips and industry best practices, and explore code libraries and more resources provided by Microsoft and others.

• Shows you step by step how to implement the very latest security techniques
• Reveals the secrets of secret-keeping—encryption, hashing, and not leaking information to begin with
• Delves into authentication, authorizing, and securing sessions
• Explains how to secure Web servers and Web services, including WCF and ASMX
• Walks you through threat modeling, so you can anticipate problems
• Offers best practices, techniques, and industry trends you can put to use right away

Defend and secure your ASP.NET 3.5 framework Web sites with this must-have guide.

Build Your Own ASP.NET 4 Web Site Using C# & VB is aimed at beginner ASP.NET developers wanting to develop their skills, web designers wanting to move into server-side programming, and experienced developers making the leap from ASP to .NET.

Readers will learn:

• language and programming basics
• how to construct ASP.Net Web Pages
• how to build web applications
• to use validation controls
• database design and development
• how to use ADO.NET
• how to manage data and content
• how to integrate Ajax and jQuery
• the role of MVC

... all in the process of successfully developing and deploying a working intranet site for a fictional company.

Did you volunteer to create a Web site for the softball team? Is it time to take your small business to the next level and let your customers shop online? Well, you can relax! ASP.NET 3.5 makes creating a dynamic site faster and cleaner than ever before, and ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies makes it easier.

First, you’ll get an introduction to all the tools and terminology you need to understand ASP.NET. If you’ve used earlier versions of ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer, you can probably skip that part and jump right into what’s new in 3.5. You'll make friends with LINQ and SQL, create sites in Visual Web Developer 2008 Express, and much more. Before you know it, you’ll discover how to:

• Integrate data, track shopping cart contents, and whisk away bugs
• Create user interfaces with easy navigation
• Use the ListView control for sophisticated formatting
• Write LINQ queries
• Add a table to a database
• Create an event handler
• Take advantage of the drag 'n' drop feature that lets you write less code
• Put all the features to work to develop dynamic Web applications

The softball team is going to love that Web site, and your customers might enjoy shopping on your site so much that you’ll have to expand your business to fill all the orders! We can’t promise that, of course, but we’re pretty sure that ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies will make creating Web sites easier and a lot more fun.

Learn to build dynamic web sites with Microsoft WebMatrix

Microsoft WebMatrix is designed to make developing dynamic ASP.NET web sites much easier. This complete Wrox guide shows you what it is, how it works, and how to get the best from it right away. It covers all the basic foundations and also introduces HTML, CSS, and Ajax using jQuery, giving beginning programmers a firm foundation for building dynamic web sites.

• Examines how WebMatrix is expected to become the new recommended entry-level tool for developing web sites using ASP.NET
• Arms beginning programmers, students, and educators with all the information they need to start developing dynamic web sites, including design tips and layout advice
• Explains the Packages Administration tool, including how to use the Facebook Social and Web Helper packages
• Covers working with files, images, and databases; debugging and error handling; maintaining security; and site optimization

In the tried-and-true tradition of Wrox Beginning guides, Beginning ASP.NET Web Pages with WebMatrix gives novice programmers the knowledge and confidence they need to get going.

If you think you're well versed in ASP.NET, think again. This exceptional guide gives you a master class in site building with ASP.NET 3.5 and other cutting-edge Microsoft technologies. You learn how to develop rock-solid web portal applications that can withstand millions of hits every day while surviving scalability and security pressures -- not just for mass-consumer homepages, but also for dashboards that deliver powerful content aggregation for enterprises.
Written by Omar AL Zabir, co-founder and CTO of Pageflakes, Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 demonstrates how to develop portals similar to My Yahoo!, iGoogle, and Pageflakes using ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX, Windows Workflow Foundation, LINQ and .NET 3.5. Through the course of the book, AL Zabir builds an open source Ajax-enabled portal prototype (available online at www.dropthings.com), and walks you though the design and architectural challenges, advanced Ajax concepts, performance optimization techniques, and server-side scalability problems involved.
You learn how to:

• Implement a highly decoupled architecture following the popular n-tier, widget-based application model
• Provide drag-and-drop functionality, and use ASP.NET 3.5 to build the server-side part of the web layer
• Use LINQ to build the data access layer, and Windows Workflow Foundation to build the business layer as a collection of workflows
• Build client-side widgets using JavaScript for faster performance and better caching
• Get maximum performance out of the ASP.NET AJAX Framework for faster, more dynamic, and scalable sites
• Build a custom web service call handler to overcome shortcomings in ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 for asynchronous, transactional, cache-friendly web services
• Overcome JavaScript performance problems, and help the user interface load faster and be more responsive
• Solve scalability and security problems as your site grows from hundreds to millions of users
• Deploy and run a high-volume production site while solving software, hardware, hosting, and Internet infrastructure problems

Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 also presents real-world ASP.NET challenges that the author has solved in building educational and enterprise portals, plus thirteen production disasters common to web applications serving millions of users. If you're ready to build state-of-the art, high-volume web applications, this book has exactly what you need.

This book was written to introduce you to the features and capabilities that ASP.NET 4 offers, as well as to give you an explanation of the foundation that ASP.NET provides. We assume you have a general understanding of Web technologies, such as previous versions of ASP.NET, Active Server Pages 2.0/3.0, or JavaServer Pages. If you understand the basics of Web programming, you should not have much trouble following along with this book's content.

If you are brand new to ASP.NET, be sure to check out Beginning ASP.NET 4: In C# and VB by Imar Spaanjaars (Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2010) to help you understand the basics.

In addition to working with Web technologies, we also assume that you understand basic programming constructs, such as variables, For Each loops, and object-oriented programming.

You may also be wondering whether this book is for the Visual Basic developer or the C# developer. We are happy to say that it is for both! When the code differs substantially, this book provides examples in both VB and C#.

This book explores the 4 release of ASP.NET. It covers each major new feature included in ASP.NET 4 in detail. The following list tells you something about the content of each chapter.

• Chapter 1, ″Application and Page Frameworks.″ The first chapter covers the frameworks of ASP.NET applications as well as the structure and frameworks provided for single ASP.NET pages. This chapter shows you how to build ASP.NET applications using IIS or the built-in Web server that comes with Visual Studio 2010. This chapter also shows you the folders and files that are part of ASP.NET. It discusses ways to compile code and shows you how to perform cross-page posting. This chapter ends by showing you easy ways to deal with your classes from within Visual Studio 2010.

• Chapters 2, 3, and 4. These three chapters are grouped together because they all deal with server controls. This batch of chapters starts by examining the idea of the server control and its pivotal role in ASP.NET development. In addition to looking at the server control framework, these chapters delve into the plethora of server controls that are at your disposal for ASP.NET development projects. Chapter 2, ″ASP.NET Server Controls and Client-Side Scripts,″ looks at the basics of working with server controls. Chapter 3, ″ASP.NET Web Server Controls,″ covers the controls that have been part of the ASP.NET technology since its initial release and the controls that have been added in each of the ASP.NET releases. Chapter 4, ″Validation Server Controls,″ describes a special group of server controls: those for validation.

• Chapter 5, ″Working with Master Pages.″ Master pages provide a means of creating templated pages that enable you to work with the entire application, as opposed to single pages. This chapter examines the creation of these templates and how to apply them to your content pages throughout an ASP.NET application.

• Chapter 6, ″Themes and Skins.″ The Cascading Style Sheet files you are allowed to use in ASP.NET 1.0/1.1 are simply not adequate in many regards, especially in the area of server controls. This chapter looks at how to deal with the styles that your applications require and shows you how to create a centrally managed look-and-feel for all the pages of your application by using themes and the skin files that are part of a theme.

• Chapter 7, ″Data Binding.″ One of the more important tasks of ASP.NET is presenting data, and this chapter looks at the underlying capabilities that enable you to work with the data programmatically before issuing the data to a control.

• Chapter 8, ″Data Management with ADO.NET.″ This chapter presents the ADO.NET data model provided by ASP.NET, which allows you to handle the retrieval, updating, and deleting of data quickly and logically.

• Chapter 9, ″Querying with LINQ.″ The.NET Framework 4 includes a nice access model language called LINQ. LINQ is a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. This chapter introduces you to LINQ and how to effectively use this feature in your Web applications today.

• Chapter 10, ″Working with XML and LINQ to XML.″ The .NET Framework and ASP.NET 4 have many capabilities built into their frameworks that enable you to easily extract, create, manipulate, and store XML. This chapter takes a close look at the XML technologies built into ASP.NET and the underlying .NET Framework.

• Chapter 11, ″Introduction to the Provider Model.″ The provider model is built into ASP.NET to make the lives of developers so much easier and more productive than ever before. This chapter gives an overview of this provider model and how it is used throughout ASP.NET 4.

• Chapter 12, ″Extending the Provider Model.″ After an introduction of the provider model, this chapter looks at some of the ways to extend the provider model found in ASP.NET 4. This chapter also reviews a couple of sample extensions to the provider model.

• Chapter 13, ″Site Navigation.″ Most developers do not simply develop single pages—they build applications. One of the application capabilities provided by ASP.NET 4 is the site navigation system covered in this chapter.

• Chapter 14, ″Personalization.″ Developers are always looking for ways to store information pertinent to the end user. After it is stored, this personalization data has to be persisted for future visits or for grabbing other pages within the same application. The ASP.NET team developed a way to store this information—the ASP.NET personalization system. The great thing about this system is that you configure the entire behavior of the system from the web.config file.

• Chapter 15, ″Membership and Role Management.″ This chapter covers the membership and role management system developed to simplify adding authentication and authorization to your ASP.NET applications. This chapter focuses on using the web.config file for controlling how these systems are applied, as well as on the server controls that work with the underlying systems.

• Chapter 16, ″Portal Frameworks and Web Parts.″ This chapter explains Web Parts—a way of encapsulating pages into smaller and more manageable objects.

• Chapter 17, ″HTML and CSS Design with ASP.NET.″ Visual Studio 2010 places a lot of focus on building a CSS-based Web. This chapter takes a close look at how you can effectively work with HTML and CSS design for your ASP.NET applications.

• Chapter 18, ″ASP.NET AJAX.″ AJAX is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. In Web application development, it signifies the capability to build applications that make use of the XMLHttpRequest object. Visual Studio 2010 contains the ability to build AJAX-enabled ASP.NET applications from the default install of the IDE. This chapter takes a look at this way to build your applications.

• Chapter 19, ″ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.″ Along with the capabilities to build ASP.NET applications that make use of the AJAX technology, a series of controls is available to make the task rather simple. This chapter takes a good look at the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit and how to use this toolkit with your applications today.

• Chapter 20, ″Security.″ This chapter discusses security beyond the membership and role management features provided by ASP.NET 4. This chapter provides an in-depth look at the authentication and authorization mechanics inherent in the ASP.NET technology, as well as HTTP access types and impersonations.

• Chapter 21, ″State Management.″ Because ASP.NET is a request-response–based technology, state management and the performance of requests and responses take on significant importance. This chapter introduces these two separate but important areas of ASP.NET development.

• Chapter 22, ″Caching.″ Because of the request-response nature of ASP.NET, caching (storing previous generated results, images, and pages) on the server becomes rather important to the performance of your ASP.NET applications. This chapter looks at some of the advanced caching capabilities provided by ASP.NET, including the SQL cache invalidation feature which is part of ASP.NET 4. This chapter also takes a look at object caching and object caching extensibility.

• Chapter 23, ″Debugging and Error Handling.″ This chapter tells you how to properly structure error handling within your applications. It also shows you how to use various debugging techniques to find errors that your applications might contain.

• Chapter 24, ″File I/O and Streams.″ This chapter takes a close look at working with various file types and streams that might come into your ASP.NET applications.

• Chapter 25, ″User and Server Controls.″ Not only can you use the plethora of server controls that come with ASP.NET, but you can also use the same framework these controls use and build your own. This chapter describes building your own server controls and how to use them within your applications.

• Chapter 26, ″Modules and Handlers.″ This chapter looks at two methods of manipulating the way ASP.NET processes HTTP requests: HttpModule and HttpHandler. Each method provides a unique level of access to the underlying processing of ASP.NET, and each can be a powerful tool for creating Web applications.

• Chapter 27, "ASP.NET MVC." ASP.NET MVC is the latest major addition to ASP.NET and has generated a lot of excitement from the development community. ASP.NET MVC supplies you with the means to create ASP.NET using the Model-View-Controller models that many developers expect. ASP.NET MVC provides developers with the testability, flexibility, an...