Visual C# Tutorials

Introduction to ASP.NET

Welcome to the world of web development. It is yet another one large sector of application development involving web pages, servers, databases, networking and a lot of more new terminologies and concepts. If you have read the Language Fundamentals and Windows Forms section, then you have already started developing applications for the desktop. These applications can be run locally in your computer and does not require connection to the internet. But this section will not be for applications that can only be run on your computer, but web applications that can be shared and used by multiple networked computers or even by the whole world.

Welcome to the internet, a gigantic space of networked servers and computers making the whole world connected. And through internet, millions of websites can be accessed. These websites contain one or more web pages. These web pages can either be static or dynamic. Static web pages simply show information and no sort of user input is needed. Back in the early days of the internet, static web pages are everywhere. But today, people want to see some interactivity to web pages. Dynamic pages are pages that are generated using some data from the server or the user. Web sites can now be called web applications because they don't just show information anymore, they now provide useful functionality and services that can be compared to desktop applications. Web applications become so popular because you don't need to install them in your computer and you can access them anywhere provided that you have an internet connection. A web application framework allows you to easily create these web applications. Microsoft developed its own web application framework, and after several versions, this is now called ASP.NET.

ASP.NET is a web application framework used to create dynamic and data-driven web sites. ASP stands for "Active Server Pages". Before the arrival of ASP.NET, Microsoft developed ASP which is now called classic ASP. When .NET Framework was developed, Microsoft upgraded ASP to use the power of .NET hence the name ASP.NET. ASP.NET is also a server-side scripting language because using code, you can communicate to the actual server. An example of this is showing the server time to the user. There are two methodologies that you can use in ASP.NET. These are ASP.NET Webforms and ASP.NET MVC.

ASP.NET Webforms allows you to create web pages as if it is a windows form. You drag ASP.NET controls such as a button to the web form. The web form can then handle events such as Page Load or the click of a button. These events and logic can be defined in a code-behind or in an embedded C# or VB.NET code. We will be using Webforms in the next lessons because it is simpler and you will be familliar to it if you have already learned windows forms.

ASP.NET MVC or Model-View-Controller is a newer way of creating ASP.NET sites. As the name suggests, it allows you to separate the Model, the View and the Controller. The Model represents the data sources that your site will be using. The View represents the page that will be presented to the user, and the Controller contains tha logic and connects the Model and the View.

The world of ASP.NET is a very large topic to master, but the following lessons will teach you the fundamentals to create basic dynamic and data-driven websites. You will enjoy learning and creating ASP.NET applications.