INTRODUCTION
Chapter 32: Introducing ASP.NET Web Forms
This chapter begins your study of web application development using ASP.NET. As you will see, serverside scripting code has now been replaced with real object-oriented languages (e.g., C# and VB .NET).
This chapter will examine the construction of an ASP.NET web page, the underlying programming
model, and other key aspects of ASP.NET, such as your choice of web server and the use of web.config
files.
Chapter 33: ASP.NET Web Controls, Master Pages, and Themes
Whereas the previous chapter showed you how to construct ASP.NET Page objects, this chapter will
examine the controls that populate the internal control tree. Here, you will examine the core ASP.NET
web controls, including validation controls, the intrinsic site navigation controls, and various databinding operations. This chapter will also illustrate the role of master pages and the ASP.NET theme
engine, which is a server-side alternative to traditional style sheets.
Chapter 34: ASP.NET State Management Techniques
This chapter extends your understanding of ASP.NET by examining various ways to handle state
management under .NET. Like classic ASP, ASP.NET allows you to create cookies and application-level
and session-level variables quite easily. However, ASP.NET also introduces a new state management
technique: the application cache. After you look at the numerous ways to handle state with ASP.NET, you
will examine the role of the HttpApplication base class and learn how to alter the runtime behavior of
your web application dynamically using the web.config file.
Downloadable Appendixes
As if 34 chapters were not enough, I have made two additional chapters available for download from the
home page of this book at the Apress web site (www.apress.com). The first appendix covers the basics of
the Windows Forms API, which is used for a few of the UI examples in this text. The second appendix
examines the platform-independent nature of .NET via the Mono platform.
Downloadable Appendix A: Programming with Windows Forms
The original desktop GUI toolkit that shipped with the .NET platform is called Windows Forms. This
appendix will walk you through the role of this UI framework and illustrate how to build main windows,
dialog boxes, and menu systems. You will also learn about the role of form inheritance and see how to
render 2D graphical data using the System.Drawing namespace. You will wrap things up by building a
(semicapable) painting application that illustrates the various topics discussed throughout this
appendix.
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