RTM’d today: Microsoft ASP.NET 4 Step by Step

We’re pleased to announce that Microsoft ASP.NET 4 Step by Step, by George Shepherd, has shipped to the printer!

The book includes 26 chapters, spans 640 pages, and

Features easy-to-follow, logically planned lessons to help you learn at your own pace
Steps you through the core capabilities and fundamental techniques for using Visual Studio 2010 with ASP.NET 4.0 to build Web applications and Web services
Includes a companion CD with code samples, data sets, and a fully searchable eBook

The book will be available via online retailers around May 12.

Here’s the chapter-level TOC:

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction xix

Part I Fundamentals

1 Web Application Basics 3

2 ASP.NET Application Fundamentals 25

3 The Page Rendering Model 59

4 Custom Rendered Controls 79

5 Composite Controls 101

6 Control Potpourri 119

Part II Advanced Features

7 A Consistent Look and Feel 143

8 Configuration 163

9 Logging In 181

10 Data Binding 207

11 Web Site Navigation 237

12 Personalization 257

13 Web Parts 267

Part III Caching and State Management

14 Session State 291

15 Application Data Caching 321

16 Caching Output 343

Part IV Diagnostics and Plumbing

17 Diagnostics and Debugging 363

18 The HttpApplication Class and HTTP Modules 385

9 HTTP Handlers 405

Part V Dynamic Data, XBAP, MVC, AJAX, and Silverlight

20 Dynamic Data 423

21 ASP.NET and WPF Content 433

22 The ASP.NET MVC Framework 449

23 AJAX 473

24 Silverlight and ASP.NET 513

Part VI Services and Deployment

25 Windows Communication Foundation 555

26 Deployment 575

Index 587

And here’s some of the Introduction, to further describe the book for you:

Introduction

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.

The purpose of this book is to tell the story of ASP.NET development. Each section presents
a specific ASP.NET feature in a digestible format with examples. The stepwise instructions
yield immediate working results. Most of the main features of ASP.NET are illustrated here
using succinct, easily duplicated examples. The examples are rich to illustrate features without
being overbearing. In addition to showing off ASP.NET features by example, this book
contains practical applications of each feature so that you can apply these techniques in the
real world. After reading this book and applying the exercises you’ll have a great head start
into building real Web sites that include such modern features as AJAX, WCF services, custom
controls, and master pages.

This book is organized so that you can read each chapter independently for the most part.
With the exception of Chapter 1, “Web Application Basics,” and the three chapters on server-side
controls (Chapters 3 to 5), which make sense to tackle together, each chapter serves as
a self-contained block of information about a particular ASP.NET feature. In addition, for
the sake of completeness, Chapter 1 also includes information about how IIS and ASP.NET
interact together.

Who This Book Is For

This book is targeted at several types of developers:

Those starting out completely new to ASP.NET The text includes enough back
story to explain the Web development saga even if you’ve developed only desktop
applications.
Those migrating from either ASP.NET 1.x, 2.0, 3.x, or even classic ASP The text
explains how ASP.NET 4 is different from earlier versions of ASP.NET. It also includes
references explaining differences between ASP.NET and classic ASP.
Those who want to consume ASP.NET how-to knowledge in digestible pieces You
don’t have to read the chapters in any particular order to find the book valuable. Each
chapter stands more or less on its own (with the exception of the first chapter, which
details the fundamentals of Web applications—you might want to read it first if you’ve
never ventured beyond desktop application development). You might find it useful to
study the chapters about server-side controls (Chapters 3 to 5) together, but it’s not
completely necessary to do so.