Teach yourself the fundamentals of Web development with ASP.NET 4-one step at a time. With STEP BY STEP, you get the guidance and learn-by-doing examples you need to start building Web applications and Web services in the Microsoft Visual Studio® 2010 environment. The author-a highly regarded programming expert, writer, and instructor-illuminates ASP.NET features through practical examples that help developers quickly grasp concepts and apply techniques to the real world. The book also includes a companion CD with code samples, data sets, and a fully searchable eBook.

This book shows you how to write Web applications using Microsoft ASP.NET 4, the most current version of the Microsoft HTTP request processing framework. Web development has come a long way since the earliest sites began popping up on the Internet in the early 1990s. The world of Web development offers several choices of development tools. During the past few years, ASP.NET has evolved to become one of the most consistent, stable, and feature-rich frameworks available for managing HTTP requests.

ASP.NET, together with Microsoft Visual Studio, includes a number of features to make your life as a Web developer easier. For example, Visual Studio offers several project templates that you can use to develop your site. Visual Studio also supports a number of development modes, including using Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) directly to test your site during development, using a built-in Web server, and developing your site over an FTP connection. With the debugger in Visual Studio, you can run the site and step through the critical areas of your code to find problems. With the Visual Studio Designer, you can develop effective user interfaces by dropping control elements onto a canvas to see how they appear visually. And when you are ready to deploy your application, Visual Studio makes it easy to create a deployment package. These are but a few of the features built into the ASP.NET framework when paired with Visual Studio.