I could sure use some advice.

I have been wanting to learn more about developing .asp pages and I have not learned asp as of yet.

I was interested in learning asp.net but when I heard that asp.net 2.0 was coming out I waited figuring that learning asp.net 2.0 would be better.

But what I am learning is that most of the books that I have seen pick up on learning the differences between asp.net and asp.net 2.0.

So my question is how can I learn asp.net 2.0 from scratch?

Are there any books or classes that teach asp.net 2.0 from the beginning?

Would you recommend something else?

Would you recommend ColdFusion over asp.net? Or some other "easy to learn" program?

Or is there an easier way to add this type of interactivity to a web site?

I do appreciate your thoughts and suggestions! I am looking to add things like a secure login page, a master page in .css, and an online store to mention a few.

Thanks

CJ

Hi,

i have developed in CF in the past. Nice and elegant scripting language. But difficult in hosting terms.
Have used ASP over the years. Not so elegant as CF, but easier and cheaper to host.
Have used PHP for a while. Yak! I hated all the echo's and the number of lines i needed to do something simple.

Have switched to ASP.NET.
This is certainly much much much better than anything we had in the past. No doubt. Period!

I recommend "ASP.NET for Developers" by Peter Ladka. A comprehensive book of 650 pages on ASP.NET 1.1. You will pick up the new thingy's in dotnet 2 without effort. Fun to read too. Amazon can help you. Very good is also ASP.NET for Dummies (no offense). Worthwile is also "A developers Notebook" by Lee (O Reilly). This focusses on version 2. Is nice to read, has good practical examples, but does not claim to be a comprehensive getting started guide.

You can download Visual Web Developer for free from MS. And download the ASP.NET SDK (software development kit) That contains all and everything. Code examples, explanations, the entire Cass Library, the works!
And don't forget to download the free SQL Server 2005 Express.



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The client is allways right even if he is not.