Chapter 1. Introduction to ASP.NET MVC
This chapter covers
- A brief history of ASP.NET
- An introduction to the MVC pattern
- What’s new in ASP.NET MVC 3/4
ASP.NET MVC is a web development framework on the Microsoft .NET platform that provides a way for developers to build well-structured web applications. Introduced as an alternative to Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC has significantly grown in popularity since its first public preview in 2007, and now many large web applications are built using this technology.
Although Microsoft has been developing tools and frameworks for web development for a long time, ASP.NET MVC provides a major shift from previous efforts with a focus on clean code, separation of concerns, and testability.
In this first chapter, we’ll briefly explore the history of Microsoft’s web platform as well as introduce the MVC design pattern. Finally, we’ll mention some of the new features of ASP.NET MVC that will be explored throughout this book. If you already have experience with previous versions of ASP.NET MVC, you may want to skip on to chapter 2.