WEB DEVELOPMENT USING MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGIES

Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet
(World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). This can include web design, web content
development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security
configuration, and e-commerce development. However, among web professionals, "web development"
usually refers to the main non-design aspects of building web sites: writing markup and coding. Web
development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most
complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.

Microsoft Corporation has made the Web Development Process simpler. They introduced new
extravagant technologies which made us easier to create dynamic WebPages.

The technologies /tools fall into three major categories such as

1. ASP.net
2. Silverlight
3. WebPI

As far as Web Development is concerned, one can follow two approaches or can follow combined of two
approaches when needed. They include designer and developer. Designer can make use of readymade
tool such as FrontPage or Expression Studio to design the Websites whereas Developer can make use of
IDE(Integrated Development Environment) such as Visual Studio with (ActiveX Server Pages)ASP.net to
do coding on own to develop dynamic rich websites. But Microsoft has made this effort simple by
combining both approaches by integrating Visual Studio with Expression Studio. Let’s go deeper into
each of technologies mentioned above.

ASP.NET is a web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers
to build dynamic web sites, web applications and web services. It was first released in January 2002 with
version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP)
technology. ASP.NET is built on the Common Language Runtime (CLR), allowing programmers to write
ASP.NET code using any supported .NET language. The ASP.NET SOAP extension framework allows
ASP.NET components to process SOAP messages.

Characteristics
Pages

.NET pages, known officially as "web forms", are the main building block for application
development. Web forms are contained in files with an ".aspx" extension; these files typically
contain static XHTML markup, as well as markup defining server-side Web Controls and User
Controls where the developers place all the required static and dynamic content for the web page.
Additionally, dynamic code which runs on the server can be placed in a page within a block <%
-- dynamic code -- %> which is similar to other web development technologies such as PHP,
JSP, and ASP, but this practice is generally discouraged except for the purposes of data binding
since it requires more calls when rendering the page

Code-behind model

Microsoft recommends dealing with dynamic program code by using the code-behind model,
which places this code in a separate file or in a specially designated script tag. Code-behind files
typically have names like MyPage.aspx.cs or MyPage.aspx.vb while the page file is
MyPage.aspx (same filename as the page file (ASPX), but with the final extension denoting the
page language). This practice is automatic in Microsoft Visual Studio and other IDEs. When
using this style of programming, the developer writes code to respond to different events, like the
page being loaded, or a control being clicked, rather than a procedural walk through the
document.

ASP.NET's code-behind model marks a departure from Classic ASP in that it encourages
developers to build applications with separation of presentation and content in mind. In theory,
this would allow a web designer, for example, to focus on the design markup with less potential
for disturbing the programming code that drives it. This is similar to the separation of the
controller from the view in model-view-controller frameworks.

Example
<%@ Page Language="C#" CodeFile="SampleCodeBehind.aspx.cs"
Inherits="Website.SampleCodeBehind"
AutoEventWireup="true" %>

Development tools
Several available software packages exist for developing ASP.NET applications:

Product Developer Licensing

ASP.NET Intellisense Generator BlueVision LLC Free
Microsoft Visual Studio Microsoft Free and Commercial
CodeGear Delphi Embarcadero Technologies Commercial
Macromedia HomeSite Adobe Systems Commercial
Microsoft Expression Web Microsoft Commercial
Microsoft SharePoint Designer Microsoft Free
MonoDevelop Novell and the Mono community Free Open Source
SharpDevelop ICSharpCode Team Free Open Source
Eiffel for ASP.NET Eiffel Software Free Open Source and Commercial
Adobe Dreamweaver Adobe Systems Commercial

Extension
Microsoft has released some extension frameworks that plug into ASP.NET and extend its
functionality. Some of them are:
ASP.NET AJAX
An extension with both client-side as well as server-side components for writing
ASP.NET pages that incorporate AJAX functionality.
ASP.NET MVC Framework
An extension to author ASP.NET pages using the MVC architecture.

Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework that integrates multimedia, computer

graphics, animation and interactivity into a single runtime environment. Initially released as a
video streaming plugin, later versions brought additional interactivity features and support for
CLI languages and development tools. The current version 4 was released in April 2010.Features
of Silverlight are similar to those in Adobe Flash.

It is compatible with multiple web browsers used on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X
operating systems. Mobile devices, starting with Windows Phone 7 and Symbian (Series 60)
phones, are likely to become supported in 2010. A free software implementation named
Moonlight, developed by Novell in cooperation with Microsoft, is available to bring most
Silverlight functionality to Linux, FreeBSD and other open source platforms.

Overview
Silverlight provides a retained mode graphics system similar to Windows Presentation
Foundation, and integrates multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single
runtime environment. In Silverlight applications, user interfaces are declared in Extensible
Application Markup Language (XAML) and programmed using a subset of the .NET
Framework. XAML can be used for marking up the vector graphics and animations. Silverlight
can also be used to create Windows Sidebar gadgets for Windows Vista.

Silverlight supports Windows Media Video (WMV), Windows Media Audio (WMA) and MPEG
Layer III (MP3) media content across all supported browsers without requiring Windows Media
Player, the Windows Media Player ActiveX control or Windows Media browser plugins.
Because Windows Media Video 9 is an implementation of the Society of Motion Picture and
Television Engineers (SMPTE) VC-1 standard, Silverlight also supports VC-1 video, though still
only in an Advanced Systems Format (ASF) container format. Furthermore, the Software license
agreement says VC-1 is only licensed for the "personal and non-commercial use of a consumer".
Silverlight, since version 3, supports the playback of H.264 video. Silverlight makes it possible
to dynamically load Extensible Markup Language (XML) content that can be manipulated
through a Document Object Model (DOM) interface, a technique that is consistent with
conventional Ajax techniques. Silverlight exposes a Downloader object which can be used to
download content, like scripts, media assets or other data, as may be required by the application.
With version 2, the programming logic can be written in any .NET language, including some
derivatives of common dynamic programming languages like IronRuby and IronPython.
Development tools

A Silverlight application being edited in Microsoft Visual Studio.

Silverlight applications can be written in any .NET programming language. As such, any
development tools which can be used with .NET languages can work with Silverlight, provided
they can target the Silverlight CoreCLR for hosting the application, instead of the .NET
Framework CLR. Microsoft has positioned Microsoft Expression Blend versions 2 and 2 SP1 for
designing the UI of Silverlight 1.0 and 2 applications respectively. Visual Studio 2008 can be
used to develop and debug Silverlight applications. To create Silverlight projects and let the
compiler target CoreCLR, Visual Studio 2008 requires the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio.

A Silverlight control is a ZIP format file with extension .XAP containing a list of one or more
.NET managed assemblies (.DLL files) along with the AppManifest.XAML file containing this
list along with the entry point (class and assembly). It can be hosted in any HTML file using an
object tag, for example: <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2,"
type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"><param
name="source" value="MySilverLightControl.xap"/></object>

A Silverlight project contains the Silverlight.js and CreateSilverlight.js files which

initializes the Silverlight plugin for use in HTML pages, a XAML file for the UI, and code-
behind files for the application code. Silverlight applications are debugged in a manner similar to
ASP.NET applications. Visual Studio's CLR Remote Cross Platform Debugging feature can be
used to debug Silverlight applications running on a different platform as well.

In conjunction with the release of Silverlight 2, Eclipse was added as a development tool option.

Silverlight SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Silverlight uses the ZIP file format as the container format for Silverlight apps (see above), and
the files contained within a Silverlight applet can therefore be accessed by any standard ZIP
reader. Silverlight content is designed and stored in the human-readable XAML format, which is
based on XML, the text-based standard that derives from the same markup language as HTML.
All text defined in an XAML file, such as paragraphs of text or button captions, is in standard
Unicode format, and can be parsed as plain text by an XML reader or a generalized text parsing
utility. Therefore, any ZIP-aware search engine capable of parsing XML or arbitrarily decorated
plaintext is capable of processing Silverlight content. However, as with any site, including
JavaScript-driven sites, content that is generated by code may not be accessible for SEO.

Silverlight's ZIP and XML standards-based accessibility starkly contrasts with that of Flash,
which uses specialized non-standardized formats for which specifications are only available from
the vendor (Adobe), and where search engines such as Google are dependent on proprietary
technologies to interact with Flash content.
SILVERLIGHT Vs FLASH –A Comparison

Animation - Silverlight
File size - Flash
Scripting - Silverlight
Video/Audio - Silverlight
Sound processing - Flash
Accessibility - Flash
Platform compatibility - Flash
Text representation/SEO - Silverlight
Supported image formats - Flash
Socket programming - Flash
Webcam support - Flash
Deployment - Flash
Windows application - Flash
Media streaming – Silverlight

Initially released on January 21, 2009, Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a simple,
free tool that automates the installation of Microsoft's entire Web Platform including:

 IIS
 Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
 SQL Server 2008 Express Edition
 Microsoft .NET Framework
 Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio
 PHP
 and more.

The final (non-beta) 2.0 version of the software, released September 24, 2009, adds the ability to
automate installation of certain 3rd party software, such as [2]:

 WordPress
 Umbraco
 Drupal
 Joomla
 Orchard
 and more.

Additionally, Web PI 2.0's options are populated dynamically at runtime from Microsoft's
servers, allowing installation options to be updated without the need to download newer versions
of the Web PI software.
On July 7, 2010, Microsoft announced Web PI 3 which includes WebMatrix Beta, a new set of
integrated tools for web development. WebMatrix is available only through Web PI 3. Web PI 3
comes additional tools for web development including IIS Developer Express, SQL Server
Compact and several popular open source web applications like DotNetNuke, Umbraco,
WordPress and Joomla!

Supported operating systems include Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1+, Windows XP SP3+,
Windows Server 2003 SP2+, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Supported Architectures include both x86 and 64-bit.

The Web PI can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web Platform website at
www.microsoft.com/web

One of the cool new releases coming out this year is a small download manager - the Microsoft Web
Platform Installer - that makes installing and configuring web server and web development stacks really
easy.  It is a free tool that you can download from the www.microsoft.com/web site (here is the direct link
to the installer – choose the 2.0 version).  It works with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server
2003 and Windows Server 2008.

The Web Platform Installer provides an easy way to quickly install and customize all the software you
need to develop or deploy web sites and applications on a Windows machine.  The tool automatically
analyses what your system currently has installed, allows you to easily mark additional components to
be added, and then automates installing them all at once when you click the install button (saving you
from having to manually install each one yourself). 

For example, you can click the “Web Server” section above to customize the individual IIS web server
modules installed on the box.  This includes both the built-in IIS modules that ship with Windows (like
the directory browsing module), as well as additional modules available as separate downloads.  Below
I’ve selected two additional modules – the Application Request Routing and URL Rewrite modules – to
be installed

The URL Rewrite module is a free Microsoft module that enables you to publish custom URLs from your
sites and optimize them for search engine optimization (SEO).  You can enforce SEO rules (consistent
casing, embedded keywords, etc) and customize how your site looks from an external perspective
however you want (the admin tool will even help guide you to write the regular expression rules)

The Application Request Routing is a free Microsoft module that supports forward-proxy style scenarios,
and enables dynamic load-balancing of requests across multiple web-server machines (allowing you to
scale out, move machines behind DMZ firewall scenarios, and bring machines in and out of a farm for
maintenance without disruption). 

In addition to URL Rewrite and Application Request Routing, there are dozens of other web server
modules you can select that enable WebDAV, Secure FTP, automated deployment, remote database
management through the IIS admin tool for hosted scenarios, media server streaming scenarios, and
more.  You can also install framework additions like ASP.NET MVC, .NET 3.5 SP1, SQL Express and
associated SQL administration tools, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express, and more.

Windows Web Application Gallery

The web platform installer also integrates with the new Windows Web Application Gallery now online:
www.microsoft.com/web/gallery 

This gallery allows you to easily install existing web applications onto your server.  The gallery contains a
variety of popular .NET open source applications (like DotNetNuke, ScrewTurn Wiki and Umbraco CMS)
as well as PHP open source applications (including WordPress and Drupal).  You can easily browse and
install them using the Web Platform Installer as well (just click the “Web Applications” tab and check the
applications you want to install)

In addition to downloading the application, the web platform installer will create a new site/application
root and configure the appropriate site settings and optionally install the database.

Do You Need Silverlight?

You've probably seen the message: "An application you want to download may require
Silverlight." May? If that's marketing, I'm not convinced that I need the product. So what exactly
is Silverlight?

Fundamentally, Silverlight is Microsoft's competitive answer to Adobe's Flash, the long-standing

dominant standard for multimedia Web applications. Silverlight integrates animations, video,
and interactivity (the ability to click on an animated item and trigger a response). Web site
developers can do things that would be difficult or impossible without Silverlight. But does that
mean they should?

Silverlight requires Microsoft's .NET Framework, another optional Windows component. .NET
is probably going to become the prevailing standard under which new Windows applications are
developed, so eventually you will need to install it. But is Silverlight going to become a
multimedia standard so widely used by Web sites that you absolutely positively must have it in
order to enjoy Web surfing adequately?

Probably not, because Silverlight is not compatible with Linux. And most Web servers are
running some flavor of Linux. Novell has released Moonlight, a Linux-based free software
implementation of Silverlight's framework, in conjunction with Microsoft. But it does not have
the full functionality of Silverlight and will probably lag behind for years to come.