ASP.NET 2.0 Cookbook, 2nd Edition

4. Topics Not Covered

Though the ASP.NET 2.0 Cookbook’s coverage is wide-ranging, there are many topics we don’t cover. For instance, we won’t teach you the basics of XML. (Many other books do a fine job of it, including O’Reilly’s XML in a Nutshell.) Rather, we use XML in many examples throughout the book and assume you know the basics. Likewise, we apply a similar standard when discussing the fundamentals of object-oriented development and other base-level programming topics.

In a similar vein, we avoid interesting topics that are useless in solving day-to-day development problems. For example, we omitted Passport authentication. Though interesting, the use of Passport authentication is not widespread. Indeed, we have cast away more ideas than we can name because they seemed somehow “off target” for our audience.

Many .NET-related topics are interesting from a programmer’s point of view but are not pertinent to ASP.NET 2.0. For instance, working with the .NET process model is a career topic, but a programmer’s ability to control it through ASP.NET 2.0 is limited. As a practical matter, topics of this kind didn’t make the cut.

Finally, because our main focus is ASP.NET 2.0, we do not delve into the details of using Visual Studio 2005. For the most part, we assume you know the basics of Visual Studio and will only mention something about how to use Visual Studio when we think it is obscure or pertinent.