Datasheet

Now with the introduction of ASP.NET 2.0 personalization, all of the above complexities are handled by

the personalization framework itself. In ASP.NET personalization, information about a specific user is

stored in a persistent format. Also, ASP.NET personalization allows you to easily manage user informa-

tion without requiring you to create and maintain your own database. In addition, the personalization

system makes the user information available using a consistent, easy-to-use, strongly typed API that you

can access from anywhere in your application. You can also store objects of any type in the personaliza-

tion system, including user information, user preferences, or business information. The personalization

system uses a generic storage system for storing the data and makes that data available to the users in a

type-safe manner. By default, ASP.NET 2.0 uses SQL Server as the storage mechanism.

Visual Studio 2005 Improvements

Visual Studio 2005 is the best development tool for building data-driven web applications. As part of the

Visual Studio 2005 suite of tools, Microsoft is introducing a new tool called Visual Web Developer

(VWD) that is designed to work with the current and next generation of ASP.NET. VWD provides pow-

erful new features for the web developer. VWD is also tuned to the specific needs of the web developer

through a new web profile that exposes a menu and window layout optimized for web development.

The environment includes a best-of-breed HTML source editor, an improved visual page designer, better

IntelliSense support, a new project system, better support for working with data, and full XHTML stan-

dards support. Collectively, these features enable you to develop data-driven web applications faster

than ever before. The next few sections will explore some of the important web development improve-

ments coming with VWD.

Better Source Code Editing

VWD provides an improved HTML source editor that enables you to write and modify your pages

faster. The source editor provides full IntelliSense throughout your files and has new features for navi-

gating and validating your markup.

Although Visual Studio.NET provides excellent IntelliSense support, it gets even better with Visual

Studio 2005. In Visual Studio 2005, IntelliSense pops up everywhere. For example, you can take full

advantage of IntelliSense within the script blocks,

Page directives, inline CSS style attributes, and

Web.config, as well as in any generic XML file that contains a DTD or XML Schema reference.

HTML Source Preservation

Visual Studio 2005 preserves the formatting of your HTML markup, including all white space, casing,

indention, carriage returns, and word wrapping. The formatting is preserved exactly, even when switch-

ing back and forth between the Design View and Source View of the page. This is one of the important

features that developers have been clamoring for in the previous versions of Visual Studio.

If you are not aware what IntelliSense is, it is the pop-up code hints that automati-

cally appear when you type in the development environment

Part I: Introduction

05_041796 ch01.qxp 12/29/06 9:09 PM Page 16