Transition from windows forms to ASP development 2

[SavantMan]

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I have been developing windows forms applications with .Net for a few years now. I'm interested in becoming more proficent with ASP.Net development. Does anyone have suggestions of books and/or other training materials/methods are available for someone in my position, and on a budget.

What I'm looking for is information specific to ASP.Net development - but more the ASP part than the .Net part if that makes sense. I'm very familiar with .Net development in general, comfortable with both VB.Net as well as C#, very familiar with the framework (mostly V2), although not necessarily with the web classes.

The reason I'm asking here instead of searching Amazon or my local bookstore is I'm trying to avoid introductory texts where I would end up wading through chapters regarding stuff like data connections.

Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions you guys might have.

 

[Qik3Coder]

It's pretty close to the same, as far as dev goes. The big thing to remember is that you have to work with state. You can't load a datagrid, then do things on row-select, or textchanged (easily/efficiently)

If [blue]you have problems[/blue], I want [green]source code[/green] AND [green]error messages[/green], none of this [red]"there was an error crap"[/red]

 

[SavantMan]

It's the state stuff, along with general design best practices that I'm looking for I think. Such as postback, style sheets, web control overview - and I'm not sure what else.

 

[jmeckley]

asp.net is a framework for servicing http. atop asp.net currently sit 3 major html rendering engines.
1. webforms
2. monorail
3. ms mvc

there may be more, but these are the top 3, probably in that order too. monorail and ms mvc are very similar. The major difference is the defualt ViewEngine. Both frameworks allow you to swap view engines with other implementations, so really they are about the same.

Each has there own pros and cons.
Webforms is suppose to model the Rich Client environment to a degree by abstracting all the HTTP stuff away from the developer. Webforms has the page life cycle is which very important to understand if you want to do any enterprise level development. This includes postbacks and viewstate. these 2 concepts are specific to webforms alone. You could also include web controls in this category as well. With webforms you also loose control of the html output. There are ways to override the html output, but usually easier to output the html yourself instead of building control adapters. This becomes an issue when you get into highly customized CSS/JS for the client.

MonoRail/MVC allows the developer to control the html. You have to write the html templates yourself. there is no such thing as server controls, a page life cycle, or postbacks. If you understand how MonoRail works then you will also be able to transition to other web development languages easily.

If you're looking for book references I would start with books about web development in general, not specific to asp.net. then find a book about asp.net. if talks about webforms 80% of the time, disreguard it. that's like teaching someone how to drag and drop controls in an IDE. It sounds like you're wanting to understand HttpAppliction/Modules/Handlers etc.

CSS and JS are not specific to asp.net, for this just pickup a good reference book. JQuery is a very popular js library which makes client code a snap.

Jason Meckley
Programmer
Specialty Bakers, Inc.

 

[SavantMan]

Thanks jmeckley - I think that's exactly what I've been looking for. Just ordered an O'Reilly book on amazon, general web development stuff with 4.5 stars over 33 reviews. Thanks again.

 

[KDavie]

Microsoft has a good set of training videos that are available for free... Take a look at

http://www.asp.net/LEARN/videos/

if you want to get a jump start before your books arrive.