Written for experienced developers, this guide explains how to work with the .NET framework classes of controls and build custom controls for Windows forms and web form pages.

One of the reasons I wrote this book is to address the needs of .NET developers who require controls that don’t yet exist. Most businesses have specific needs that only a custom control can satisfy—from custom corporate e- mail plug-ins, to a custom control that manages user security in various applications, to a reusable intranet control that tracks customer calls and routes them to the appropriate location.

Another reason I wrote this book is that you might just have the next “big idea” for a commercial control that can be sold to developers around the globe but don’t know where to start. The booming market for controls shows there is always room for another tool that saves developers precious resources.

And finally, I wrote this book to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of advanced developers. If you’re like me, you thrive in finding and understanding the cornucopia of new classes and methodologies in .NET that can’t be found in other books. Understanding the .NET Framework classes for controls and designers not only makes you a more valued professional but also allows you to take an idea from one source and meld it with another in ways not done before—the so called ah-ha effect. If you fall into any or all of these three categories, this book is for you.

This book shows you just how powerful, and yet easy to use, the new Web development environment from Microsoft really is. Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition, along with the relational database SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, allows you to build great Web sites using drag-and-drop techniques, wizards, and a huge range of developer-friendly tools and controls. The book demonstrates this by leading you through the creation of a fully featured and highly interactive e-commerce Web application, like those you are used to seeing on the Internet today.

This is not a reference book. You will not find listings of the objects, classes, properties, and methods of each feature in ASP.NET. Instead, this book is task-focused to provide you with the experience of working in Visual Web Developer, quickly getting to grips with the environment and ASP.NET, and learning how to achieve the kinds of requirements you will meet every day as you build your  applications. For example, after a brief section on installing Visual Web Developer and an introduction to the development environment, Chapter 1 gets you building pages that display and allow you to edit the data in a database.

As you progress through the book, you will learn about the following:
- Designing the structure of your Web site
- Implementing the database
- Displaying and editing data
- Building a shopping cart
- Publishing your finished site

ASP.NET 3.5 is the latest version of Microsoft’s revolutionary ASP.NET technology. It is the principal standard for creating dynamic web pages on the Windows platform. Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 raises the bar for high–quality, practical advice on learning and deploying Microsoft’s dynamic web solution.

Seasoned .NET professionals Matthew MacDonald and Mario Szpuszta explain how you can get the most from this groundbreaking new technology. They cover ASP.NET 3.5 as a whole, illustrating both the brand–new features and the functionality carried over from previous versions of ASP. This book will give you the knowledge you need to code real ASP.NET 3.5 applications in the best possible style.

The book will teach you ASP.NET 3.5 starting with core concepts to more advanced topics. You will learn

    * Core concepts of ASP.NET 3.5. Why it’s special. What it’s fundamental principals are. The basics of Visual Studio. How ASP.NET 3.5 controls are created, and how they fit into ASP.NET 3.5 pages, ultimately creating full applications
    * Data access details. The intricacies of ADO.NET and how to perform data binding to many sources from databases to file streams to XML. We include LINQ coverage so you’re on the bleeding edge
    * Security. Once considered the Achilles heel of all Windows web applications, security has vastly improved and is a cornerstone of ASP.NET 3.5. This section explains the various forms of available security, and how to best apply them
    * Taking things further using advanced user interface techniques. This includes user controls, customer server controls, client–side JavaScript, and GDI+.
    * Web services. In an increasingly connected world, working with web services grows in importance. This book will show you how to work with them.
    * ASP.NET AJAX, with an emphasis on comtemporary web development techniques
    * Development using Internet Information Services 7, Microsoft’s premier web hosting platform.
    * And much more.

Pro ASP.NET for SQL Server: High Performance Data Access for Web Developers explains how to use ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 most efficiently together. It covers all crucial performance issues and illustrates optimal techniques with enterprise-quality development.

Performance is always an issue, and optimizing database access is one of the most daunting performance challenges facing web developers. With Brennan Stehling as your guide, you'll explore the many overlaps of web and database technologies, including configuration, programming, performance tuning, and deployment. You’ll learn how to make high-performance database access not just a goal, but a reality.

What you’ll learn

• Discover what impedes ASP.NET 2.0 access to SQL Server 2005 and how to make web applications and databases work blindingly fast together.
• Learn to make the subtle choices between DataSets, DataReaders, and DataObjects, to simplify code and maximize performance.
• Optimize data-bound controls and create your own.
• See when a custom database provider is advisable and how to build one.
• Understand how to monitor and measure web/database performance.
• Learn to build, deploy, and configure enterprise-level web applications against SQL Server 2005.

This guide shows you how to build an interactive website from design to deployment. Packed with solutions to website programming problems, this book will have you building well-engineered, extendable ASP.NET websites quickly and easily.

ASP.NET Website Programming shows you how to build an interactive website from design to deployment. Packed with solutions to website programming problems, this book will have you building well-engineered, extendable ASP.NET websites quickly and easily. This book is for developers who use ASP.NET and Visual Basic .NET or use Visual Studio .NET Professional or above or Visual Basic .NET Standard.

The book concentrates on websites that focus on content. It does not show how to produce an e-commerce system, although a lot of the advice will apply to e-commerce sites. We could add a shopping basket module using the same foundations, for example. This book is different from most Wrox books, because we build a single working website throughout the book. However, each chapter stands alone and shows how to develop individual modules, which you can adapt for your own websites. We also suggest a framework that allows us to create modules and slot them in to the website quickly and easily.

The book is for developers who have a reasonable knowledge of ASP.NET, and want to apply that knowledge to building websites. You will get the most from this book if you have read a decent amount of Wrox's Beginning ASP.NET using Visual Basic .NET, or Professional ASP.NET and a VB.NET book. You should be comfortable using Visual Studio .NET to create ASP.NET projects, and that you know VB.NET.

Beginning .NET Game Programming in VB .NET presents the work of David Weller (.NET Game evangelist at Microsoft) and a group of key Microsoft insiders who decided to write the ideal introduction to game programming for VB .NET programmers. Weller has switched his previous book to VB .NET and added a bonus chapter. The book has passed all internal Microsoft tests as to programming style. This thoroughly revised and improved version (including a bonus chapter) is the ideal way to get into .NET game programming using the VB .NET language.

Silverlight is a lightweight but powerful plug-in for multiple web browsers on multiple operating systems that makes it easier than ever to create rich web-based content, applications, and controls. With support for vector graphics, animations, full-screen high-definition video, and more, Silverlight gives you the ability to create more compelling content than you dreamed possible for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Silverlight provides much of the power of Windows Presentation Foundation, but with less overhead and easy integration with HTML and AJAX-style applications. Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed is the authoritative book that covers the technology in a practical and approachable fashion, authored by Silverlight guru and Microsoft developer Adam Nathan.

* Covers everything you need to know about Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) in Silverlight
* Examines the Silverlight feature areas in depth: graphics, text, audio, video, animation, ink, events, and more
* Demonstrates how to create reusable controls and perform common tasks (such as drag-and-drop) using basic building blocks
* Explains how to download assets asynchronously to maximize your user experience
* Demonstrates how to create hybrid applications that mix Silverlight content with HTML or Flash content
* Highlights features scheduled for future versions of Silverlight while showing how to achieve your desired results with the current version

The most up–to–date and comprehensive introductory ASP.NET book you’ll find on any shelf, Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008 guides you through Microsoft’s latest technology for building dynamic web sites. This book will enable you to build dynamic web pages on the fly, and it assumes only the most basic knowledge of VB 2008.

The book provides exhaustive coverage of ASP.NET, guiding you from your first steps right up to the most advanced techniques, such as querying databases from within a web page and tuning your site for optimal performance. Within these pages, you’ll find tips for “best practices” and comprehensive discussions of key database and XML principles you need to know in order to be effective with ASP.NET. The book also emphasizes the invaluable coding techniques of object orientation and code behind, which will start you off on the track to building real–world web sites right from the beginning rather than just faking it with simplified coding practices.

By the time you’ve finished the book, you will have mastered the core techniques and have all the knowledge you need to begin work as a professional ASP.NET developer.

The most up–to–date and comprehensive introductory ASP.NET book you’ll find on any shelf, Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 guides you through Microsoft’s latest technology for building dynamic web sites. This book will enable you to build dynamic web pages on the fly, and it assumes only the most basic knowledge of C#.

The book provides exhaustive coverage of ASP.NET, guiding you from your first steps right up to the most advanced techniques, such as querying databases from within a web page and tuning your site for optimal performance. Within these pages, you’ll find tips for “best practices” and comprehensive discussions of key database and XML principles you need to know in order to be effective with ASP.NET. The book also emphasizes the invaluable coding techniques of object orientation and code behind, which will start you off on the track to building real–world web sites right from the beginning—rather than just faking it with simplified coding practices.

By the time you’ve finished the book, you will have mastered the core techniques and have all the knowledge you need to begin work as a professional ASP.NET developer.

 LINQ is the project name for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that provide a generic approach to querying data from different data sources. LINQ will premier in Visual Studio 2008, and will become the next must-have skill for .NET developers. For more information about LINQ, you can check out the author’s portal at www.linqdev.com.

Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 is all about code.

Literally, this book starts with code and ends with code. In most books, the author shows the simplest example demonstrating how to use a method, but they so rarely show how to use the more complex prototypes. Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 is different. Demonstrating the overwhelming majority of LINQ operators and protoypes, it is a veritable treasury of LINQ examples.

Rather than obscure the relevant LINQ principles in code examples by focusing on a demonstration application you have no interest in writing, Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 cuts right to the chase of each LINQ operator, method, or class. However, where complexity is necessary to truly demonstrate an issue, the examples are right there in the thick of it. For example, code samples demonstrating how to handle concurrency conflicts actually create concurrency conflicts so you can step through the code and see them unfold.

Most books tell you about the simple stuff, while few books warn you of the pitfalls. Where Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 returns your investment is in the hours, and sometimes days, spent by the author determining why something may not work as expected. Sometimes this results in an innocent looking paragraph that may take you a minute to read and understand, but took days to research and explain.

Face it, most technical books while informative, are dull. LINQ need not be dull. Written with a sense of humor, Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 will attempt to entertain you on your journey through the wonderland of LINQ and C# 2008.