Preface

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 book—it is the ninth book for Daniele, the seventh for Stefano, and the fourth for Marco—but it is the most complex one we’ve 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.