This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to build rich and interactive web sites that run on the Microsoft platform. With the knowledge you gain from this book, you create a great foundation to build any type of web site, ranging from simple hobby-related web sites to sites you may be creating for commercial purposes.

Anyone new to web programming should be able to follow along because no prior background in web development is assumed. The book starts at the very beginning of web development by showing you how to obtain and install Visual Web Developer. The chapters that follow gradually introduce you to new technologies, building on top of the knowledge gained in the previous chapters.

Do you have a strong preference for Visual Basic over C# or the other way around? Or do you think both languages are equally cool? Or maybe you haven't made up your mind yet and want to learn both languages? Either way, you'll like this book because all code examples are presented in both languages!

Even if you're already familiar with previous versions of ASP, with the 1.x versions in particular, you may gain a lot from this book. Although many concepts from ASP 2.0 are brought forward into ASP 3.5, you'll discover there's a host of new stuff to be found in this book, including an introduction to LINQ, the new CSS and JavaScript debugging tools, new ASP controls, and integrated support for ASP Ajax.

To build effective and attractive database-driven web sites, you need two things: a solid and fast framework to run your web pages on and a rich and extensive environment to create and program these web pages. With ASP 3.5 and Visual Web Developer 2008 you get both. Together they form the platform to create dynamic and interactive web applications.

ASP 3.5 builds on top of its popular predecessor ASP 2.0. While maintaining backward compatibility with sites built using this older version, the Microsoft Framework 3.5 in general and ASP 3.5 in particular add a lot of new, compelling features to the mix.

Continuing the path of "less code" that was entered with the 2.0 version of the Framework, ASP 3.5 lets you accomplish more with even less code. New features like LINQ that are added to the Framework allow you to access a database with little to no hand written code. The integration of Microsoft ASP Ajax into the ASP Framework and Visual Web Developer means you can now create fast responding and spiffy web interfaces simply by dragging a few controls onto your page and setting a few properties. This book gives you an in-depth look at both these technologies.

The support for cascading style sheets (CSS), the language to lay out and format web pages, has undergone a major overhaul in Visual Web Developer. The design time support, that shows you how a page will eventually look in the browser, has been vastly improved. Additionally, Visual Web Developer now ships with a lot of tools that make writing CSS a breeze.

However, drag-and-drop support and visual tools are not the only things you'll learn from this book. ASP 3.5 and Visual Web Developer 2008 come with a great and extensive set of tools to help you program your web applications. These tools range from the new LINQ syntax that allows you to query data and databases in your web applications, to the vastly improved debugging capabilities that allow you to debug your application from client-side JavaScript all the way up into your server-side code, all with the same familiar user interface, commands, and actions.

Under the hood, ASP 3.5 makes use of the same run-time as version 2.0. This ensures a great backward compatibility with that version, which means that ASP 2.0 applications continue to run under the new framework. But don't be fooled by the fact that the run-time hasn't changed. Although the technical underpinnings needed to execute your web application haven't cha