ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks and Tips

• This unique book offers readers invaluable information from the cream of the crop-Microsoft MVPs-who are now sharing undocumented hacks for the first time
• Packed with superlative advice on ASP, Microsoft's popular technology for Web sites, this book will help readers become more productive developers, find solutions to problems they thought unsolvable, and develop better applications
• During their many years of working with ASP.NET, Microsoft MVPs have answered thousands of questions, putting them in the distinctive position of knowing exactly what readers need to know
• Many of the hacks will apply to multiple versions of ASP.NET, not just 2.0 but 1.0 and 1.1 as well

This book is also available as part of the 5-book ASP.NET 2.0 Wrox Box (ISBN: 0-470-11757-5). This 5-book set includes:

• Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition (ISBN: 0-470-04178-1)
• ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution (ISBN: 0764584642 )
• Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Security, Membership, and Role Management (ISBN: 0764596985)
• Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Server Control and Component Development (ISBN: 0471793507)
• ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks and Tips (ISBN: 0764597663)
• CD-ROM with more than 1000 pages of bonus chapters from 15 other .NET 2.0 and SQL Server(TM) 2005 Wrox books
• DVD with 180-day trial version of Microsoft(r) Visual Studio(r) 2005 Professional Edition

As Microsoft MVPs, this team of authors has witnessed first-hand the innumerable problems and challenges that even the most experienced developers regularly encounter. This project survival guide offers little-known solutions, undocumented features, tips, and tricks—otherwise known as hacks—that you can use to build and deliver real-life applications using ASP.NET.

Written with the seasoned professional in mind, this book examines how some hacks ultimately become mainstream code or practices that are integrated into a product or process. You'll benefit from the extensive experience of the authors as they show you how to adapt various hacks to your specific application and business environment. Plus, in-depth discussions of the solutions prove to bea helpful way to learn more about the inner workings of ASP.NET 2.0.

What you will learn from this book

• Various hacks such as page templates, multiple forms, URL rewriting, and SQL cache dependencies
• The many improvements in ASP.NET 2.0 that were originally hacks but are now part of the base product
• How the many new built-in functions reduce the amount of code you need to write for the most common applications

Who this book is for

This book is for experienced developers familiar with ASP.NET programming who are looking to take their skills from an "average" to "excellent" level.

Wrox MVP Hacks and Tips provide unique and little-known solutions to complex programming challenges. Written by Microsoft MVPs—highly regarded independent technical experts nominated by their peers and selected by Microsoft—each title reveals the highest quality hacks that have been discovered through years of hands-on experience.

David Yack is the president of Colorado Technology Consultants, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Colorado. He is a Microsoft Regional Director and a Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET. As a senior hands-on technology and business consultant with over 18 years of industry experience, David enjoys developing applications for both the Windows and Unix platforms, specializing in large system architecture and design. David embraced .NET during the final beta days of version 1.0 and has been helping clients migrate and build new applications on the technology, as well as helping to mentor and train their staffs. David is a frequent speaker at user group and industry events and is on the author teams of two NET 2.0–related books. David also founded and is on the leadership team for the South Colorado .NET User Group. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and two children. You can always track David down via his blog at http:/blog.davidyack.com where he writes about his .NET adventures.

Joe Mayo runs his own company, Mayo Software, and is an author, consultant, and instructor specializing in .NET technologies. He operates the C# Station website (www.csharp-station.com) and is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). Joe’s previous books include C# Unleashed (Sams) and C# Builder Kick Start (Sams). For more information about Joe, please visit mayosoftware.com.

Scott Hanselman is currently the chief architect at the Corillian Corporation (NASDAQ: CORI), an eFinance enabler. He has over 13 years experience developing software in C, C++, VB, COM, and certainly in VB.NET and C#. Scott is proud to be both a Microsoft RD as well as an MVP for both ASP.NET and Solutions Architecture. Scott has spoken at dozens of conferences worldwide, including three TechEds and the North African DevCon. He is a primary contributor to “newtelligence DasBlog Community Edition 1.8,” the most popular open-source ASP.NET blogging software hosted on SourceForge. This is the fourth book Scott has worked on for Wrox. His thoughts on the Zen of .NET, programming, and Web Services can be found on his blog at www.computerzen.com. He welcomes e-mail at mailto:[email protected].

Fredrik Normén is a consultant who works for Callista Knowledgebase AB. He works mostly as a mentor, solution developer, architect, and instructor. He has worked with the .NET framework since the first bit of .NET 1.0 was released in 2000. He has over 10 years of experience building web applications, started with Perl and moving on to ASP and ASP.NET. You can find Fredrik’s blog at http://fredrik.nsquared2.com.

Dan Wahlin (Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET and XMLWeb Services) is the president of Wahlin Consulting LLC, which provides enterprise consulting and training services as well as ASP.NET server controls. He also founded the XML for ASP.NET Developers website (www.XMLforASP.net), which focuses on using XML, ADO.NET and Web Services in Microsoft’s .NET platform. Dan is a regular speaker at different .NET conferences and is a member of the INETASpeaker’s Bureau, which enables him to interact with .NET user groups around the United States. He has also authored/co-authored five books on various .NET technologies and writes for several technical magazines.

J. Ambrose Little is an ASP Insider and Microsoft MVP who works as a senior software engineer for a Tampa-based commercial software company and as the content director for ASPAlliance.com. He’s an author of numerous articles, co-author of Professional ADO.NET 2 and ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks and Tips, and has spoken at various .NET user groups and events in Florida.

Jonathan D. Goodyear is the president of ASPSOFT, Inc, a software consulting company based out of Orlando, Florida. He is a contributing editor for both Visual Studio Magazine and asp.netPRO Magazine, and frequently speaks at major technology conferences such as VSLive and ASP.NET Connections. Jonathan was a featured speaker at the Visual Studio 2005 Launch Event in Orlando, Florida, and speaks at numerous .NET user groups through the International .NET Association (INETA). He wrote one of the first books about .NET development, Debugging ASP.NET (New Riders Publishing), and appeared in a video, Visual Studio .NET: An Introduction, by WatchIT.com. He is the founder and editor of the online magazine angryCoder.com, and is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for ASP.NET, an ASP Insider, and the Microsoft regional director (RD) for Florida.