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Chapter 1: aesthNETics
Framework. To get the most out of this book, the reader should be at a bare minimum familiar with
object-oriented coding but really should have some level of experience in some level of .NET. Again, a
lack of this experience will not be a total obstacle to getting something out of this text; but it will certainly
be a hindrance (one only you can gauge).
To extend that thought, though, a familiarity with Visual Studio 2005 will really help your understand-
ing of the concepts presented in the later chapters. Most of the code demonstrations are going to be
performed in Visual Studio 2005. When introducing a new feature of Visual Studio, that feature will, of
course, be explained in detail. However, if the concept is not new to Visual Studio 2005 and not necessar-
ily pertinent to the discussion at hand, it will not be adequately explained to the person who has never
seen the interface.
It should be noted that, for all of the demonstrations in Visual Studio 2005, you could recreate the func-
tionality in Visual Studio Web Developer 2005 Express Edition. In fact, much of the learning done by the
author was done through this free development tool. Obviously, if you have the wherewithal to purchase
the full Visual Studio 2005 IDE, then you should. It has more features and is much more powerful. But if
you are just getting started or are a hobbyist, there shouldn’t be anything in this book that you can’t do
inthefreeversion.
The biggest requirement, though, is a genuine interest in making the websites you develop more aes-
thetically pleasing. The desire to learn is something that shouldn’t be downplayed and, if you have that
desire, you can take advantage of the concepts in this book. The concepts presented here should be the
foundation that every web developer builds on, not just the .NET folks. There are cool tricks that will
be showcased that are specific to .NET, but the concepts are universal. If you develop on the web, you
should get something out of this book.
Summary
The quintessential concept of aesthNETics is not really a new one. Web developers for years have strug-
gled to make their sites look good while being powerful and useful. Thousands of books on the market
talk about basic web design concepts. If you search for ‘‘web design concepts’’ in Google, you will get
back more than 100,000,000 results (literally). There are hundreds of applications on the market that
profess that they can turn the average Joe into a professional web designer. There are classes for elemen-
tary school students that teach the basics of web design. In short, there is no deficit of resources outlining
the concepts of web design.
Where the deficit seems to come in is with the actual utilization of this information. Many developers,
and, again, this is not specific to .NET developers, do not spend the time working on the aesthetics of the
sites they develop. Throw a button control here, a couple of text boxes there, maybe try to implement a
color scheme that was developed 10 years ago for the corporate intranet, and bam,youhaveasite.
What aesthNETics tries to push is using the powerful tools of the .NET 2.0 Framework to make your
sites aesthetically pleasing. This book is focused on the .NET development community. Many of the
concepts are universal, and other developers might find some good information in its content. But the
primary audience is .NET developers. Most tools illustrated are ones that are specific to .NET 2.0 and
Visual Studio 2005. While other platforms may have similar functionality, that is not really the point of
discussion of this text. The point of this book is to make .NET developers better.
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