I want to learn it but Asp.Net because i would like to get a good job in a reputed web site design company
but i m confused here. I was looking at a site point book which is titled "Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C# & VB, 2nd Edition"

I don't understand why you would create a asp.net with c# and VB? Isn't asp a programming language and asp.net is kind of like the latest version.

Also do asp.net web pages end in aspx?

Hai,
First u should know about what is .Net? before going into asp.net.

.NET

.Net is a Platform where u can run more than one language.It provides u language Interoperability..So u can call VB coding in C# and C#-Coding in VB...
U have CLR to convert the language into Intermediate Code..By usiing that interoperability can be achieved in DotNet...

U get more details by surfing google...Get some good idea about .NET and then enter in to asp.net..

What is ASP.NET?

ASP.NET is a programming framework from Microsoft for developing next generation web Applications. It is a framework built on the Common Language Runtime and introduces a new paradigm to server-side Web development.

There are several advantages that ASP.NET offers, such as:

Performance. The code written in ASP.NET is compiled, so straight ahead it is a performance boost. The code written in .Net Framework is complied in Common Language Runtime. ASP.NET can take advantage of early binding, just-in-time compilation, automatic resource optimization, runtime profiling, automatic memory management, enhanced exception handling, and caching services, right out-of-the-box, this improves the performance before you start coding. A problem with Web site’s performance is with data-access.
For example, a database table will spend the majority of its execution time connecting to the database and querying the information.

ASP.NET comes with a data-caching module. This data-caching module allows you to specify what data on an ASP page to cache and on what conditions to empty the cache and re-query the data-store.

ASP.NET ships with Performance Counters which system administrators can use to gather application metrics. They can be used to measure the performance of either a single instance of an ASP.NET application or all ASP.NET applications combined on a computer.

Tool Support. Now you can drag-and-drop web controls like you do VB controls, double-click and write the server code for the control. ASP .NET supports XCOPY deployment that requires no registration or stopping of the server, supports dynamic DLL updates and extensible configuration using XML files.

Flexibility. Because ASP.NET is based on the Common Language Runtime, the power and flexibility of that entire platform is made available to web application developers. The Common Language Runtime's Base Class libraries, Messaging, and Data Access solutions are all seamlessly accessible from the web.

ASP.NET is also language-independent, so you can choose a language that best applies to your application, or partition your application across many languages. Further, Common Language Runtime interoperability guarantees that your existing investment in COM-based development is preserved when migrating to ASP.NET.

Simplicity. ASP.NET makes it easy to perform common tasks, from simple form submission and client authentication to deployment and site configuration. For example, the ASP.NET Page Framework allows you to build user interfaces that cleanly separate application logic from presentation code, and handle events in a simple, VB-like forms processing model. Additionally, the Common Language Runtime simplifies development with managed code services like automatic reference counting and garbage collection.

Manageability The ASP.NET configuration system handles both ends, and provides a hierarchical configuration set-up that enables extensible configuration data to be defined and used throughout an application, a Web site, and/or an entire domain. No server restart is required, even to deploy or replace running compiled code!

Scalability. ASP.NET has been designed with scalability in mind, enables automatic process recovery through error and memory overload detection. Session state can now be maintained in a number of ways. Session data can be passed in a hidden field within the pages, or in one of two out-of-process State Stores. The two flavors they come in are the ASP.NET State Store, which maintains stateful data in memory, or the SQL State Store, for writing stateful data to your SQL Server database.

Customizability and Extensibility. ASP.NET delivers a well-factored architecture that allows developers to "plug-in" their code at the appropriate level. In fact, it is possible to extend or replace any sub-component of the ASP.NET runtime with your own custom-written component. Implementing custom authentication or state services has never been easier.

Security ASP.NET works in conjunction with the Microsoft .NET Framework and Internet Information Server (IIS) 5.0 to provide outstanding security capabilities.
Language Support

ASP.NET currently offers built-in support for three languages, C# (pronounced "C Sharp"), Visual Basic, and JScript.

ASP.NET is different from ASP in two major ways:

ASP.NET offers several programmatic enhancements over ASP, such as, Compiled ASP.NET Scripts, Caching: Post-Back Forms: Server Controls, and Deployment.

ASP.NET offers a change in programming fundamentals. ASP followed procedural pattern of creating pages.(e.g.; lets take a form which takes user information and then authenticates the user. Here we would generally create a form, which receives the user information in the first page, and then in the second page we would process the user collection for authentication in ASP.)

Writing ASP.NET pages is an entirely different experience, ASP.NET still requires this round trip to collect user input, but the developer does not need to concern himself with these pesky details. ASP.NET pages are created much more like VB apps. The above two pages can be clubbed together in one single page.

<FORM ACTION="Processform.aspx" RUNAT="server">

Login Name: <asp:textbox id="Name" runat="server"/>

<BR>

Password: <aspassword id="Password" runat="server"/>

<BR>

<asp:button text="Login" runat="server" onclick="SubmitButton_Clicked"/>

<P>

<B><asp:label id="Authentication" runat="server"/></B>

</FORM>

<script language="vb" runat="server">

Sub SubmitButton_Clicked(Object Scr, EventArgs E)

Database processing to check for the user

Authentication.Text = "Welcome," & Name.Text & "you are a valid user"

End Sub

</script>

Hi,
You've probably heard the word ASP.net fairly often these days, especially on developer sites and news. This article will explain what the fuss is all about. ASP.NET is not just the next version of ASP; it is the next era of web development. ASP.NET allows you to use a full featured programming language such as C# (pronounced C-Sharp) or VB.NET to build web applications easily.

ASP.NET still renders HTML :

Unfortunately, the Internet still has bandwidth limitations and not every person is running the same web browser. These issues make it necessary to stick with HTML as our mark-up language of choice. This means that web pages won't look quite as amazing as a fully fledged application running under Windows, but with a bit of skill and creative flair, you can make some rather amazing web applications with ASP.NET. ASP.NET processes all code on the server (in a similar way to a normal application). When the ASP.NET code has been processed, the server returns the resultant HTML to the client. If the client supports JavaScript, then the server will use it to make the clients browser experience quicker and easier. Even with HTML being the limiting factor here, ASP.NET still manages to bring true OOP (Object Oriented Programming) to the Internet.

OOP on the Internet:

Object Oriented Programming makes it possible to build extremely large applications, while still keeping your code clean and structured. Now with ASP.NET, we can do the same on the web. Traditional ASP uses HTML and VBScript (or Jscript) to process and render pages, but because VBScript is a scripting language, you were forced to write spaghetti code (VBScript was entwined in the HTML and ended up rather messy in larger applications). ASP.NET separates code from display, and you can even have pages with no ASP.NET code in them at all. By adding references in your HTML (called controls), you can tell ASP.NET that you want a button here, some text there, and then in your code, you can manipulate what these controls look like, what they display, how big they are, etc. Controls can do more than just display information. You can add events to controls, so that when a visitor clicks on a button, for example, ASP.NET executes a function of your choice.

Web Services :

One great feature of ASP.NET is Web Services. Web services mean that you can literally have several pieces of your application on different servers all around the world, and the entire application will work perfectly and seamlessly. Web services can even work with normal .NET Windows applications. For example: A lot of people would like to have a stock ticker on their web site, but not many people want to manually type in all changes to the prices. If one company (a stock broker) creates a web service and updates the stock prices periodically, then all of those people wanting the prices can use this web service to log in, run a function which grabs the current price for a chosen company, and return it. Web services can be used for so many things: news, currency exchange, login verification.. the ways in which they can be used are limited to your imagination!

Great XML Support :

ASP.NET makes it simple to use XML for data storage, configuration and manipulation. The tools which are built into ASP.NET for working with XML are very easy to use. XML is excellent for storing information that rarely changes, because you can just cache that information in the computers memory after it has been initially extracted.

Class Library :

ASP.NET includes an enormous class library which was built by Microsoft. Because this class library is so large, it encapsulates a a huge number of common functions. For example, if you wanted to retrieve data from a database and display that data in a simple grid control through classic ASP, then you'd have to write quite a lot of code.

In ASP.NET, you don't write any code to display the data: you just write the code to bind the data to an object called a DataGrid (which can be done in just a couple of lines). Then, you just have to create a reference on your page to where that DataGrid should go. The DataGrid will be rendered as a table, and will contain all of the data extracted from the database.

Microsoft has created an amazingly well designed MSDN library for ASP.NET and all of the other .NET languages. It includes a full class library containing information and examples on every class, function, method, and property accessible through ASP.NET.

The MSDN library also includes some tutorials and examples to get you started. It may take you a while to get used to the format and layout of the MSDN ASP.NET library, however, once you do, you will find it's an invaluable resource to aid you throughout your ASP.NET learning experience. The .NET MSDN library can be found at .NET Framework Developer Center

Complete Compatibility

One of the most important goals of .NET was to allow developers to write an ASP.NET application using multiple programming languages. As long as each ASP.NET page contains only one programming language, you can mix and match different pages using different languages and they will work together seamlessly. This means you can now have a team of developers with half programming in C#, and the other half in VB.NET, with no need to worry about language incompatibilities, etc.

A cool little side-affect of all this is that all the programming languages look very similar, and differ only by their language syntax.

Take the following code snippets for example. They both do exactly the same thing but the first is written in C#, and the second in VB.NET.

If you take either of the code examples shown above and add the following HTML to them, then they would both run perfectly inside of an ASP.NET page:

__________________
Krishnakumar.S
Beware of Everything -that is un true; stick to the Truth shall succeed slowly but steadily