Confused and dissapppointed about ASP.NET tutorials

[Tony Girgenti]

Hello.

When i use the ASP.NET quick start tutorials at
http://quickstarts.asp.net/QuickStartv20/default.aspx, all of the samples
are shown in HTML.

It even says there "If you have never developed Web pages before, the
QuickStart is not for you. You should be fluent in HTML and general Web
development terminology. You do not need previous ASP experience, but you
should be familiar with the concepts behind interactive Web pages, including
forms, scripts, and data access."

Some of the things they say(and i thought this is what it would be) about
ASP.NET are "World-Class Tool Support. The ASP.NET framework is complemented
by a rich toolbox and designer in the Visual Studio integrated development
environment. WYSIWYG editing, drag-and-drop server controls, and automatic
deployment are just a few of the features this powerful tool provides."

and

"the ASP.NET page framework allows you to build user interfaces that cleanly
separate application logic from presentation code and to handle events in a
simple, Visual Basic - like forms processing model."

For some reason this sounds contrary. When i started making a web page
project, i used the VS.NET2003 documentation to learn about web pages. Now
i find out that i need to be "fluent" in HTML. So, it sounds like, if i
want to learn ASP.NET, i need to learn HTML first.

Why did they make it sound so simple in VS.NET and not so simple in the
tutorials ? Am i overly worried that i will have to learn HTML if i want to
be profecient in ASP.NET ?

Thanks,
Tony

 

[Morten Wennevik]

Hi Tony,

I took a quick glance at some of the source code, and they do indeed love
html over actual coding, and the first tutorials aren't asp.net related at
all. Furthermore they have put the code inline, instead of using a
separate code file. Look for <script language="C#"
runat=server></script> This is the actual code (replace C# with VB if you
do VB code)

Alternately you can use the 1.1 version which has more samples and
separate code files (select the file from the top menu)

http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/aspplus/

Furthermore, you don't need much knowledge of HTML to have fun with
asp.net. Just copy/paste the html and tweak the code. The more code you
learn, the more html you will pick up.

 

[Mike Lowery]

In some respects, ASP.Net can be viewed as an addition to HTML. You can't have
the prior without the latter. Why? Because browsers only understand HTML and
ASP.Net must generate brower-compatible HTML.

If you can learn a programming language you should be able to learn HTML fairly
quickly.