Chapter 5. Introduction to Internet Programming

OBJECTIVES

• Review Internet basics

• Learn the difference between HTML and ASP

• Understand what makes ASP.NET better than ASP

The Internet is a wide area network—the widest area network possible, really—that consists of a huge number of computers connected via phone lines, wireless connections, and satellites. When you access the Internet, your computer becomes part of that network.

In order to take advantage of ASP.NET, and to understand how Web pages and data make their way across the Internet, you must first have a basic understanding of how the Internet works. In addition, because requesting an ASP.NET page from within a browser retrieves HTML as the response, it's important that you understand at least the basics of HTML and its various tags. That way, as you investigate the code created by your ASP.NET pages, you'll understand exactly what the controls on your page are creating for the user.

The material in this chapter may seem somewhat basic—that is, you may already have a good understanding of both the Internet and HTML. In that case, you may want to skim ahead to the content specific to the sample application you'll be building, toward the end of the chapter. Don't skip that material, however!