Difficulties 1: Tools
Say, in your company, you are using Visual Studio 2003 and in order to improve your skill, you want to put give more time to learn it at home. But, the problem is you do not have Visual Studio 2003 at home. You went to check and realize that there is one which is free called Visual Web Developer 2005, but it is for ASP.NET 2.0 only.
Solution: Not found yet. (I think I’ll just learn ASP.NET 2.0 at home while in office, I will learn ASP.NET 1.1)
Side-point about ASP.NET framework and Visual Studio IDE:
IDE | | | Free light version IDE |
Visual Studio .NET 2002 | Requires 1.0 ASP.NET Framework * | Supports 1.0 ASP.NET Framework only | Not available |
Visual Studio .NET 2003 | Requires 1.1 ASP.NET Framework | Supports 1.1 ASP.NET Framework only | Not available |
Visual Studio .NET 2005 | Requires 2.0 ASP.NET Framework | Supports 2.0 ASP.NET Framework only | Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition |
Visual Studio 2008 | Requires 3.5 ASP.NET Framework | Supports 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 ASP.NET Framework (2.0 and 3.0 ASP.NET Framework will automatically be installed) | Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition ** |
* During the earliest version of ASP.NET, in some places, you might not see the version number. Instead they just put ASP.NET. But this is actually refering to ASP.NET 1.0 version.
** You might bound into different terms like Visual Studio Express Edition instead of Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition. This is my understanding. An analogy to explain the word “Studio” is by using Microsoft Office. Under Microsoft Office, there are Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. This “Studio” is like Microsoft Office. So, to be more clear and organized, Visual Studio Express Edition consists of:
Visual Web Developer 2008 Express EditionVisual Basic (.NET) 2008 Express EditionVisual C# 2008 Express EditionVisual C++ 2008 Express EditionSQL Server 2008 Express EditionDifficulties 2: Terms
(You already gotten some confusing terms from above.)
Certains terms in ASP.NET could be quite confusing. And seems like those to come out with this terms, do not realize this problem. Otherwise, there will be more articles and diagrams to clear up this confusion.
Example: ASP.NET vs .NET Framework vs ASP.NET Framework vs .NET? For my knowledge right know, they all are refering to the same thing.
More examples: dataset, datagrid, gridview, dataadapter, datareader, datatable, dataview, detailsview, datalist, formview and repeater. Some terms remain the same from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0, but some are new terms from .NET 2.0.
Solution: The second diagram at the bottom at this page helps to clear up some of the above terms.
Lastly, please correct me if I got any inaccurate information here. Thanks in advance.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Frameworkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studiohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studio_Express