Preface

This has been a very long journey. We found that writing this book was a challenging task, a much harder one than we had anticipated, but there were also moments of joy and discovery along the way! The idea for the book first came to us 18 months ago, and many days and nights have come and gone between the first sentence we wrote and the final book you hold today.

This is not our first book—it is the ninth book for Daniele, the seventh for Stefano, and the fourth for Marco—but it is the most complex one we’ve attempted because of the Techniques format we implement in the book. In addition, we were coauthoring another book for Manning Publications, Entity Framework 4 in Action, at roughly the same time.

Our aim in writing this book was not to create a typical reference book: there are plenty of those around. We felt that because ASP.NET has now reached a high level of maturity, the time was ripe for a book of best practices, and that is what we set out to do. Instead of focusing on how a class is implemented or what members offer, this book shows you how to get tasks done, the right way.

If your days (and nights) are spent on implementing web applications, you know that the best way to learn is from experience. This book contains all the tips we have learned in more than 10 years of working with ASP.NET. Everything in this book comes from our own day-by-day experience working as consultants as well from ASP.NET community members. We learned a lot from other people’s problems, and we are happy to now share the solutions and best practices with you.

In this book you will find everything you need to build your web applications using a Problem/Solution/Discussion approach. Each scenario is motivated, then resolved, and finally discussed and explained.

This is a book that we felt was missing from the market. We hope we have filled that need successfully and we invite you to send us your feedback and let us know if we have been successful in attaining our goal.

We hope that our efforts will help you in your daily work. Enjoy the read, get your hands dirty, and have some fun!