Introduction

Why does the world need Yet Another Web Framework?

This is the question that is most likely on your mind —  or perhaps it’s what you were thinking when you saw this book sitting on the shelf. We each asked ourselves this many times over the last few years. Indeed there are many frameworks out there today fl  avored with every buzzword the industry can think of. In short, it’s easy to be skeptical. Yet as we, the authors, delve deeper into the latest and greatest web framework, we’re each starting to realize just how far the industry has come in the last 10 years. Rob began programming for the Web with Classic ASP in 1997 and was giddy with excitement. When .NET came out, he remembers running around his offi  ce, stopping everyone from working and explaining that the world just tilted on its axis.

We all feel the same way about ASP.NET MVC. Not because it’s “something different” but because it offers developers the ultimate chance to “do it their way.” You don’t like the way the platform renders the View? Change it! Just about every part of the ASP.NET MVC Framework is “swappable” —  if the shoes pinch, get different shoes. Don’t like ties? Why not a bow tie? You’re totally in control. ASP.NET MVC is a web framework that comes with a bunch of conventions to make your life easier when you follow them, but if you don’t want them, the framework is quick to step out of your way so that you can get your work done in the way you like.

This book is going to go into the “out-of-the-box” experience you’ll have with ASP.NET MVC, but more importantly you’ll learn practical ways that you can extend ASP.NET MVC with your own magic —  then hopefully share that magic with others.

Because of this extensibility and attention to “doing it your way,” we’re happy to embrace Yet Another Web Framework and hope you are willing to come along with us for the ride.

Introduction

We’ve waited a long time for this! The first rough early preview release of ASP.NET MVC was made public in December 2007, and immediately the software development world was filled with eager enthusiasm for it. Could this be the most exciting advancement in Microsoft web technology since ASP.NET itself was born way back in 2002? Would we, at last, have a web development framework that encourages and supports high-quality software engineering?

Since then, we’ve had five further community technology preview (CTP) releases, one beta release, two release candidates, and now at last in March 2009, the finished 1.0 release. Some releases were just incremental improvements on their predecessors; others were sub-stantial shifts in the framework’s mechanics and aesthetics (e.g., the whole notion of model binding, covered in Chapter 11, didn’t appear until preview 5). At each stage, the ASP.NET MVC team invited feedback and guided their development efforts according to real-world usage experiences. Not all Microsoft products are built this way; consequently, ASP.NET MVC 1.0 is much more mature than the average 1.0 release.

I started work on this book in December 2007, foolishly anticipating a summer 2008 pub-lication date.With every new preview release, the whole manuscript was updated, reworked, expanded, polished even more—sometimes even whole chapters became obsolete and simply had to be discarded. The project became so ingrained into my life that every conversation with friends, family, or colleagues began by them asking “How’s the book?” shortly followed by, “Tell me again—what’s the book about?” I hope that this finished manuscript, created in par-allel with ASP.NET MVC itself, gives you not just a clear understanding of what the framework does today, but also why it was designed this way and how the same principles can improve the quality of your own code.

Preface

Over the years, people have been asking the ASP.NET support team for the ability to develop web applications using a model-view-controller (MVC) architecture. In October 2007, Scott Guthrie presented the frst preview of the ASP.NET MVC framework. Ever since, interest in this product has been growing, and many example applications and components have been released on the Internet by enthusiastic bloggers and Microsoft employees.

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly was written to help people who have a basic knowledge of ASP.NET Webforms to quickly get up-to-speed with developing ASP.NET MVC applications. The book starts by explaining the MVC design pattern, and follows this with a bird's eye-view of what the ASP.NET MVC framework has to offer. After that, each chapter focuses on one aspect of the framework, providing in-depth details of the components that comprise the ASP.NET MVC framework. For each of the concepts explained, a to-the-point example application is provided, demonstrating the theory behind the concept.

By the time you fnish this book, you'll be well be on your way to mastering the ASP.NET MVC framework, and will have the confdence to build your own ASP.NET MVC applications.

Introduction

The idea ofWeb portals is nothing new. In fact, SharePoint is not even a totally new idea, with SharePoint Portal Server (and Windows SharePoint Services version 2) being first introduced in 2003 (or even Share- Point Team Services first released in 2001). But with the introduction of Microsoft Offices SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services version 3 (WSS), Web portal development took a huge leap forward. Many new technologies were introduced, and since they were built on the .NET 2.0 Framework, MOSS andWSS were able to capitalize on many of the new and cool features that made that framework release so amazing.

But if you look at any bookstore or online book retailer for books on SharePoint, there is a woeful lack of releases that deal specifically with design. Sure, there are several books out on MOSS and WSS, but mostly they focus on the nuts and bolts of making SharePoint work. There might be a chapter here and there that deals with things that are important to the design of your SharePoint portal, but the chapter is included in a larger scope that, frankly, doesn’t overly concern itself with the way your SharePoint site looks.

The consequence to this unfortunate gap in available manuscripts is that many SharePoint sites out there look pretty much the same as any other SharePoint site. In fact, it’s not uncommon for anyone familiar with SharePoint to be able to look at a site built on SharePoint technologies and be able to immediately determine that is the case. It’s unfortunate that such a powerful set of tools often comes wrapped in such a vanilla package.

This book is unique in the fact that it puts the design of a SharePoint site as its primary scope. Sure, some of the technologies covered are also covered in other books. However, this should not be seen as overlap because, in the confines of this book, the design is the point, not necessarily the technology behind it. Also, since this book is focused towards design, universal concepts such as accessibility, CSS, and even outside applications such as Photoshop are discussed as they relate to SharePoint. While not specifically a designer’s cookbook for SharePoint, this book does try to bring the most relevant topics regarding the design perspective of a SharePoint site to those developers interested in making their sites stand out. If you want to learn how SharePoint works and how to use its administrative features to make your site powerful, there are plenty of books (many from Wrox) available to help you with that. However, if your focus is making your SharePoint sites look unique, we hope that this book will help you with that endeavor.

Introduction

Welcome to Professional Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Workflow Programming . SharePoint 2007 provides both workflow and activity developers with rich workflow programming facilities, which enable them to implement and deploy their own custom SharePoint workflows and activities.

This book presents numerous detailed step - by - step recipes for developing and deploying SharePoint workflows and activities, and numerous real - world examples in which these recipes are used. This book uses an approach based on analysis of detailed code and in - depth technical discussions to help you gain the skills, knowledge, and experience you need to develop and deploy your own custom SharePoint workflows and activities.