ASP Net developers are today able to create a huge array of dynamic web applications and interactive websites which operate in ways quite unlike the early days of basic HTML and JavaScript. No longer tied into a choice of either static, fairly dull web pages or spaghetti style pages incorporating several different languages woven together in an unhappy arrangement, with all of the ensuing compatibility issues which that entailed.
The early days of the internet and world wide web saw static pages only, with little or no perceived need at that time to engage visitors in interactive or dynamic ways. The early web was about communicating information, in much the same way as a book, a magazine or a collection of business cards.
But people's expectations and needs have evolved and changed as the technology powering the internet has evolved and developed. Today we expect more, and this generally means providing a service which is responsive, adaptable, and dynamic. Increasingly websites have grown closer to what we might have considered software. The programming involved, and even the terms used to refer to the programming are far more reminiscent of software development than web page development.
One of the major driving forces behind many websites on the net are databases. Databases can hold vast amounts of information, and be used to sort, add, edit, delete and query the data very quickly. The ability to build a website on top of a database, or dynamically linked to a database, allows the ASP Net developers to create a site which can provide far more responsive and relevant data to visitors than would otherwise have been possible.
For example, in the early days of the internet it would have been quite impossible to imagine being able to view live airport data, such as arrivals and departures. Similarly being able to check current stock and share prices would be impossible. To achieve either would have meant employing someone to sit at a computer and manually update the website every few minutes. But with modern web technologies such as ASP.Net it is now possible to build an application which will be able to query and retrieve data from the central database or data storage locations, and then display that data in an appropriate format for the visitor.
But although all this sounds great, it's easy to assume that ASP.NET development services involve sophisticated methods, detailed understanding and knowledge of programming languages and years of experience. While that may be true for some of the leading brands and more advanced web pages or online services, ASP Net has also been designed as a language which even beginners can quite easily pick up.
For example, if you have a website and would like to include a contact form, how would you go about doing this? You could create a simple HTML form, but the problem with this is that it is likely to either prompt the user to just send you an email using their own email package, or result in spam being generated as your email address becomes picked up by spammers' spiders. Alternatively you could squeeze in a section of JavaScript in the middle of your HTML code, although if the user has JavaScript turned off or has a high security setting, this may be invisible. In any case, mixing programming languages isn't entirely healthy.
But using ASP.Net, as all ASP Net developers would advise, you could quickly create a simple software utility with buttons and text boxes, include security settings, so that it would filter out spammers - perhaps by asking a simple question which would fool a robot, and then link this utility from within your web page. This means that your web page will load quicker, because there's less code in it, and the security will be much tighter, lowering spam, lowering compatibility issues and making the whole page work much more effectively and efficiently, The whole thing could easily be written and embedded within a few minutes - at no cost.
Obviously for more advanced projects you would need to employ the services of ASP Net developers who will be able to create quite complex solutions. But ultimately, the more complex the solution, the slicker, faster and more reliable the end result for the visitor. This is the way the internet is moving, and the boundaries between our offline software and our online experience is becoming increasingly blurred - if indeed, there is any such boundary at all anymore.
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