Daniele Bochicchio - ASP.NET 4.0 in Practice

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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 bookit is the ninth book for Daniele, the seventh for Stefano, and the fourth for Marcobut it is the most complex one weve 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 peoples 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!

We cant mention by name all the individuals who made contributions to this book, adding to its value in ways both large and small. All of them deserve our sincere thanks, but here we will mention only a few whose help was invaluable to us during the writing process.

Cynthia KaneCynthia is our development editor at Manning. She was there for us from the the beginning, providing support and guidance, and has proved a master at transforming a bunch of words and images into an appealing book. Thank you.

Scott GuthrieScott, also known as ScottGu, is the man behind a number of products in the Microsoft Developer Division, including ASP.NET. Scott was always willing to let us solve some of the problems that we encountered with a beta. Thank you.

The Developer Division at Microsoftthanks to everyone for their help and for building such a great product.

All the folks at ASPItalia.com, our mother shipif we managed to collect enough scenarios for your problem-solving enjoyment, part of the credit has to go to the members of our community.

Many individuals at Manning worked hard on this book to bring it to our readers. A big thank-you to Michael Stephens and Marjan Bace for believing in us, and to the production team of Mary Piergies, Joan Celmer, Susan Harkins, Gordan Salinovic, and Janet Vail for their efforts.

Our peer reviewers deserve special mention. Their suggestions and feedback were invaluable and made this a much better book. We thank Alex Thissen, Dave Corun, Anil Radhakrishna, Philippe Vialatte, Nikander Bruggeman, Margriet Bruggeman, Jason Jung, David Barkol, Perga Massimo, Braj Panda, Alessandro Gallo, Gary Bushey, Eric Swanson, Amos Bannister, and Andrew Siemer. We would also like to thank the technical proofreader, Matteo Casati, for his outstanding job of reviewing the final manuscript during production.

Last but not least, thank you, dear reader, for your trust in this book. Our hope is that it will help you in your day-to-day work and make you more productive with ASP.NET!

In addition to the people mentioned above, there are others who are important in Danieles, Stefanos, and Marcos private lives. Even if they didnt directly work on the book, they contributed in other important ways to keep the authors on track.

Daniele would like to thank his wife Noemi for her support and patience and for giving him his beautiful sons, Alessio and Matteo. A big thank-you to my parents for letting me play with computers when I was a kid, and to my family in general for supporting me. A special thank-you to my coauthors for helping me on this journey: you guys rock! And thanks to Alessio, Marco, Cristian, Matteo, and Riccardo at ASPItalia.com for all their help and support.

Stefano wants to thank his wife Sara for being supportive and extremely patient, and his family (yes, the book is finally finished!). Special thanks to my closest friends (in alphabetical order), Federico, Gabriele, Gianni, and Riccardo. Of course, I cant help mentioning Filippo, who already bought a copy of the book. Finally, a big thank-you to William and Annalisa for their friendship and their support. My last words are for Marco and Daniele: thanks guys!

Marco thanks Stefano and Daniele because its always a privilege when you have the chance to work with such smart and funny guys. I would also like to thank the whole ASPItalia.com team: Im so proud to be a part of it. Special thanks to my family, and to Barbara, for their support and for the patience theyve shown me. You have all my love.