Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in C#
ASP (Active Server Pages) is a relatively new technology that’s already leapt through several stages of evolution. It was introduced about seven years ago as an easy way to add dynamic content to ordinary web pages. Since then, it’s grown into something much more ambitious: a platform for creating advanced web applications, including e-commerce shops, data-driven portal sites, and just about anything else you can find on the Internet.ASP.NET 2.0 is the latest version of ASP, and it represents the most dramatic change yet. With ASP.NET, developers no longer need to paste together a jumble of HTML and script code in order to program the Web. Instead, you can create full-scale web applications using nothing but code and a design tool such as Visual Studio 2005. The cost of all this innovation is the learning curve. Not only do you need to learn how to use an advanced design tool (Visual Studio) and a toolkit of objects (the .NET Framework), you also need to master a programming language such as C#.The Internet began in the late 1960s as an experiment. Its goal was to create a truly resilient information network—one that could withstand the loss of several computers without preventing the others from communicating. Driven by potential disaster scenar-ios (such as nuclear attack), the U.S. Department of Defense provided the initial funding.The early Internet was mostly limited to educational institutions and defense contrac-tors. It flourished as a tool for academic collaboration, allowing researchers across the globe to share information. In the early 1990s, modems were created that could work over existing phone lines, and the Internet began to open up to commercial users. In 1993, the first HTML browser was created, and the Internet revol